Madam, - I refer to articles in The Irish Times this week regarding the publication of data on MRSA infection.
Beaumont Hospital welcomes the statement issued by the Health Service Executive on the Acute Hospitals Audit and the development of national guidelines that will establish best practice in the area.
We will be happy to provide figures on MRSA rates at the hospital once a standardised national framework on the collection of data is in place. A document containing proposals on such a framework has been sent to the HSE by the National SARI (Strategy for Control of Antimicrobial Resistance in Ireland) Committee, which is chaired by Prof Hilary Humphreys, consultant microbiologist at Beaumont. The document contains recommendations on how best to approach the collection of data that is accessible to the public and which would allow meaningful comparisons between Irish hospitals.
The data that is currently available, as part of the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Scheme (EARSS), is not standardised, has not been validated, is confined to bloodstream infections and does not allow for case-mix and the complexity of work in different hospitals.
Beaumont Hospital's position is supported by a study on MRSA carried out in the mid-western area and reported in the May edition of Eurosurveillance, a European journal which publishes information on communicable diseases. The study also found that "attribution of a case of MRSA bacteraemia to a particular healthcare facility is fraught with problems - carriage of MRSA may have preceded admission or infection may already be advanced on admission to one hospital from another facility". - Yours, etc,
LIAM DUFFY,
Chief Executive,
Beaumont Hospital,
Dublin 9.