Obama's Stimulus to Give Funding for HAI Reduction

Obama's economic stimulus package includes $50 million dollars to spent on health care-acquired-infections. Richard Besser, acting director of the CDC said that the funds, "will lay the foundation for a systematic national approach to preventing health care-associated infections". There are about 1.7 millions reported HAI's every year, however, as Don Wright, principal deputy assistant secretary for health at HHS, points out, they are almost entirely preventable.

$40 million of the funding will go to the states and their infection control strategies while the remaining $10 million will be used by CMS to enhance inspections to detect HAIs. Because of this increase in funding, Besser estimates that HAI's will reduce by 10-20% within two years (as long as the infection control policies are implemented successfully). However, Besser continuted, these reductions "are contingent upon the capacity of state and federal partners to quickly ramp up efforts to track infections and increase adherence to prevention recommendations".

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