Hospital superbug outbreak – 71 new cases

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – More than 70 patients in UHG and Merlin Park were confirmed as new cases with the antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’ CPE in the first ten months of last year.

The figure for Galway City’s two public hospitals – which the most up-to-date available – was the highest for any public hospital in the country during the January to October period of 2019.

UHG has been experiencing an ongoing outbreak of CPE since June 2017.

The details from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) show that Beaumont Hospital in Dublin recorded 64 new cases and University Hospital Limerick 59 new cases during that 10-month period.

The HPSC figures also show that during the same ten-month period at Galway University Hospitals (the umbrella name for UHG and Merlin combined), a further 245 people were ‘known’ CPE inpatients, up from 200 for all of last year.

The HPSC figures also show a number of patients with known CPE were not isolated in single rooms during their time in UHG or Merlin Park between January and October last year – which is regarded as HSE best practice.

In the 10-month period, eight patients with known CPE “were accommodated overnight in accommodation other than an en suite single room or appropriate cohort area for any part of their admission”.

HSE guidelines state that whole CPE patients do not need to be segregated from others when sitting in the waiting area, they are “one of the highest priorities for rapid single room isolation when they enter the clinical care space”.

The HSE advises that if a patient cannot immediately be placed in a single room with en suite facilities, staff must be “scrupulous” in applying precautions.

Following an unannounced inspection, the Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) said in a report published in December: “University Hospital Galway did not have adequate single room facilities to effectively isolate or segregate all patients being cared for with transmission-based precautions.”

It went on to say that bed spacing in multi-bed wards was not in compliance with best practice guidelines.
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