CBS 5 Investigates With Anna Werner

(CBS 5) MRSA is a potentially deadly staph infection, and according to the Centers for Disease Control, 85 percent of cases related to healthcare facilities. So are hospitals doing enough to deal with it?

A viewer from the South Bay asked CBS 5 Investigates to Investigate This.

Brian Bernstein's ordeal started with a fairly routine back surgery.

"We picked a day to go in, and we did it," he said.

But three days after his release from Los Gatos Community Hospital, Bernstein recalled, "I started feeling like I had the stomach flu."

It was much worse: a potentially deadly MRSA infection.

"I had a 20 to 30 percent chance of living," he told CBS 5 Investigates. Doctors told him the bacteria had wrapped around the steel screws of the implant in his back.

"My body was fighting so hard that it surprised even my surgeon that I was alive," Bernstein said.

Officials at Los Gatos Community Hospital say they're investigating but are not convinced he got the infection at the hospital.

But Bernstein wondered how many of those infections crop up at the hospital or at any hospital each year? Can that data even be found out?

As CBS 5 Investigates found out, the answer is no.

"The public is really kept in the dark," said Michael McCauley of Consumers Union.

Talking about California, he said: "In the case of these hospital infections we are really behind the pack."

McCauley said California is behind 22 other states that over the past 4 years have put regulations in place requiring some level of public reporting of hospital acquired infection rates.

"Shining the spotlight on that kind of performance data has made a real difference in improving care, because no hospital wants to be at the bottom of the list," he said.

So, why not in California?

"The Hospital Association here in California has been opposing efforts to make that information available to the public," McCauley said.

"I think that's an inaccurate statement" responded Debbie Rogers of the California Hospital Association.

CBS 5 Investigates asked Rogers if she thought that kind of public disclosure does help bring infection rates down.

"I don't know if it helps," she responded. Rogers said tracking MRSA is harder than it seems.

"Is the infection present on admission? Or, was it acquired in the hospital? So that is one of the things that we have to carefully look at," she said.

Yet tracking, and testing, now happens every day at Veterans Administration hospitals nationwide, including the facility in Palo Alto. All patients are tested on admission and on discharge. Officials with the V.A. say they're getting results.

"Within the first 9 months we reduced the number of MRSA infections in the ICU by 79 percent, and that's huge," said Dr. Julie Barr, the acting medical director of the medical surgical ICU at the Palo Alto V.A. Hospital.

Dr. Barr admits the testing is expensive, even with an in-house testing lab. But Barr noted its benefits, saying: "Even those who don't die in the hospital from MRSA infections have a 2-and-a-half times longer stay, so reducing the number of MRSA infections not only saves lives but saves money."

But Debbie Rogers with the Hospital Association said there is no hard evidence to date that universal testing works. She said hospitals might agree to some testing and some disclosure regulations, if hospitals can create their own guidelines.

"Do you create a program that is mandated to the nth degree? Or do you create a program that is mandated but the hospitals can decide which populations need to be tested," Rogers said.

Either way, patients like Bernstein hope changes come soon.

"All I want is for them to be able to let a patient know that there is MRSA in the hospital, and to make an educated decision" Bernstein said. "I don't think anybody else should suffer through what I went through."

State Senator Elaine Alquist has a pending bill that calls for disclosure and testing of high risk patients at all California hospitals. For now though Los Gatos Community Hospital wouldn't disclose any information on MRSA cases.

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