MRSA News

Even before I came to the United States to start my internal medicine residency, I had discovered that my calling was a career in infectious diseases.

Although daptomycin remains more expensive than vancomycin, it is a “suitable alternative” to daptomycin for outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy because it results in less health care utilization, researchers reported.

CMS included a new infectious disease consult add-on code as part of its proposed new fee schedule could help improve compensation for ID clinicians, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

ID is a dynamic field that is constantly changing. The types of infections we’re talking about today are different than what we may have been talking about 5 years ago. So, it’s intellectually stimulating and challenging.

There was a combined 20% increase in six antimicrobial-resistant hospital infections in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the number of clinical cases of Candida auris increased fivefold, according to the CDC.

Socioeconomic disparities among residential neighborhoods may be associated with the prevalence of five specific antimicrobial-resistant organisms, especially AmpC beta-lactamase producers and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Patients receiving infectious diseases consultation over the past decade were increasingly complex, generally sicker and more likely to die soon after a consultation was performed.

SAN ANTONIO — We caught up with Connie Steed, MSN, RN, CIC, FAPIC, at the annual meeting of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology to find out how she got “Hooked on ID.”

We checked in with CDC Director Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH, for an update on the agency’s efforts to modernize the nation’s disease surveillance and data systems and improve how the CDC communicates with the public and physicians.