A Medical Device Daily

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ; Washington) has awarded nearly $3 million for a contract to help reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) by spreading the knowledge gained from a previous AHRQ-funded project.

The Health Research & Educational Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association (Chicago), has been selected to coordinate the new three-year project, which is part of an AHRQ initiative to reduce healthcare-associated infections.

The project will continue work started by Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) and the Michigan Health & Hospital Association (Lansing, Michigan) to implement a comprehensive unit-based patient safety program to help prevent infections related to the use of central line catheters.

Often referred to as central venous catheters, central line catheters are tubes placed into a large vein in a patient's neck, chest or groin to administer medication or fluids or to collect blood samples. Each year, an estimated 250,000 cases of central line-associated bloodstream infections occur in hospitals in the U.S., and an estimated 30,000 to 62,000 patients who get the infections die as a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta).

The comprehensive program, designed to survey and improve an intensive care unit's patient safety culture, was developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins and has been used in more than 100 ICUs in Michigan.

The program includes tools to help healthcare professionals identify opportunities to reduce potential healthcare-associated infections and implement policies to make care safer. Within three months of implementation in Michigan, the program helped reduce infection rates to zero in more than 50% of participating hospitals.

Under the new contract, the safety program will be implemented by statewide consortia in at least 10 states. The consortia, which will be established as part of this project, will include members of state hospital associations, quality improvement organizations and public health agencies.

"This is an exciting opportunity to provide healthcare professionals with valuable tools that support patient safety by eliminating healthcare-associated infections in ICUs," said AHRQ Director Carolyn Clancy, MD. "Application of these research findings will help us reach our goals of improving patient care and ensuring that Americans receive high-quality, safe healthcare."

In other agreements/contracts news:

• The Washington office of the Porter Novelli public relations firm reported that it has been awarded a multimillion-dollar contract by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for outreach and awareness activities for the 2009 Medicare open enrollment season.

Porter Novelli will work with CMS to create an integrated multimedia and grassroots education campaign to encourage America's seniors and caregivers to make the most of the prescription drug and other benefits offered by Medicare — how to enroll, how to choose the plan that best fits their needs, and the importance of revisiting and updating plans during the open enrollment season.

• The Swedish Neuroscience Institute (SNI; Seattle) has joined forces with the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB; also Seattle) to fundraise for and collaborate on research they hope will lead to cures for diseases of the brain and nervous system.

Greg Foltz. MD, SNI neurosurgeon and head of the recently opened Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at Swedish Hospital's Cherry Hill Campus, is jointly leading the project with Leroy Hood, MD, PhD, ISB co-founder and president.

"This is the first time that such a large group of established researchers have been brought together from the fields of neurosurgery, neuropathology, systems biology, genomics and biostatistical analysis to address serious diseases affecting the brain, such as malignant brain tumors," said Foltz. "Also of significance is the fact that the SNI and ISB researchers are focused solely on developing early diagnostic tools and treatment solutions for human disease rather than theoretical pursuits."