Proposal targets deadly staph infection

This time, the hospital lobbyists who persuaded Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto a similar bill in 2004 will be up against a highly visible advocate. Riverside County resident Carole Moss has campaigned almost nonstop for such a law since the day in April 2006 that her 15-year-old son, Nile, died from a drug-resistant form of a staphylococcus bacterium.

In 2005, the year before Nile's death, an estimated 94,000 Americans suffered serious infections from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, according to a recently published study by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 19,000 died. The study found that 85% of these infections were from exposure to MRSA in hospitals and other healthcare settings.

Yet until Nile's death in an Orange County hospital, Moss had never heard of MRSA or realized that hospitals could kill as well as heal.

"Hospitals aren't clean and safe," Moss said. "This is the big secret that we've got to get out."

Alquist's bill would require hospitals and nursing homes to make public their infection rates, a measure that state hospitals opposed in 2004.

California Hospital Assn. spokeswoman Jan Emerson said the association could not comment on the bill, which is still in draft form, without seeing it first. In the past, hospital lobbyists argued that public reporting would leave them vulnerable to lawsuits over infections that patients may have contracted elsewhere.

MRSA is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact. Openings in the skin such as cuts or scrapes, contaminated items and surfaces, crowded living conditions and poor hygiene can aid its spread. Washing hands frequently and covering wounds are among the simplest preventive measures.

A strain of the bacterium known as community-associated MRSA has been cropping up in recent years in jails, among athletic teams, and in gyms and spas. Well-publicized outbreaks in middle schools and high schools last fall alarmed parents across the country.

Only invasive infections -- of the bloodstream, lungs or vital organs -- are potentially life-threatening. These are most likely to occur in hospital settings, where needles, catheters and open surgeries provide an entry point for bacteria.