23 Seniors Died After Receiving Flu Shot Sold by Pharmacies

https://healthimpactnews.com/2013/23-seniors-died-after-receiving-this-years-flu-shot-sold-by-pharmacies/

Package insert for Fluzone flu vaccine marketed to seniors reveals 23 seniors died during drug trial

The annual marketing campaign pushing people to receive flu vaccinations is in full force. CVS Pharmacies is offering a 20% off shopping pass if you purchase a flu vaccine.

As you can see in the screen shot above, taken from the CVS website, senior citizens over the age of 65 are being targeted to get the “high-dose” flu vaccine.

The FAQ at the CVS website defines the “high-dose” flu vaccine: “Containing four times the amount of antigen (the part of the vaccine that causes the body to produce antibody) in regular flu shots, high-dose flu shots, along with the additional antigen produced, are intended to create a stronger immune response.”

The name of this flu vaccine that is marketed for seniors is called “Fluzone.” You can find it being marketed to seniors at all the major pharmacies in the United States.

Package inserts for flu vaccines show a multitude of side effects, including death, and yet they are marketed the same as over-the-counter drugs with no prescription needed. Why?

Because in the United States vaccines enjoy complete immunity from lawsuits in the market place. If you are injured or die from a vaccine, you or your family cannot sue the manufacturer of the vaccine. This law enacted by Congress, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011.

Therefore, they are marketed with the same marketing techniques as any other high-profit product. With the baby boomer generation moving into their senior years, today’s seniors are seen as an especially lucrative market.

So financial incentives like discounts on other products, as CVS is doing, is quite common in order to boost vaccine sales.

Walgreens has a different program that especially boosts sales of vaccines:

While vaccine rates in the U.S. among children are close to 90%, rates in other parts of the world (where pharmaceutical companies do not have immunity from the law for adverse effects) are much lower. So, in partnership with Walgreens, a non-profit organization (Shot@Life) buys up the vaccines and sends them to these countries for free (who doesn’t want something for free, especially when you live in a poor country??)

This is a brilliant marketing plan for the pharmaceutical companies, as the U.S. government gives the organization buying the vaccines non-profit status, allowing them to receive tax deductible donations to pay for the vaccines. Walgreens is probably a contributor to the program as a tax write off.

With legal immunity to market dangerous products, don’t expect those doing the marketing and making the profits to warn you of the side effects. You need to find this information yourself, usually from the Internet.

For those pro-vaccine forces that warn people how dangerous it is to get information from the Internet, the information we are about to share is directly from the FDA website (at least at the time of this writing – they have been known to remove items from their website if it gets too much publicity and makes them look bad), and you can look it up yourself.

The high-dose Fluzone vaccine being marketed this flu season to seniors, which has four times the amount of antigens that the regular flu shot has, as well as the non-high dose version, had 23 seniors die during drug trials.

The package insert for the high-dose Fluzone flu vaccine is found here (for now).

In the section documenting adverse effects, this is what is written:

Within 6 months post-vaccination, 156 (6.1%) Fluzone High-Dose recipients and 93 (7.4%)  Fluzone recipients experienced a serious adverse event. No deaths were reported within 28 days post-vaccination. A total of 23 deaths were reported during the period Day 29–180 post-vaccination: (0.6%) among Fluzone High-Dose recipients and 7 (0.6%) among Fluzone 1 recipients. The majority of these participants had a medical history of cardiac, hepatic, neoplastic, renal, and/or respiratory diseases. No deaths were considered to be caused by vaccination.

This statement stating that 23 seniors died, which really should be headline news but is buried in a package insert on the FDA website, begs several questions:

1. By what basis can they conclude that “No deaths were considered to be caused by vaccination”??

2. If, as it is implied, the majority of these 23 deaths were caused by pre-existing conditions, why were there no deaths in the first 28 days? Shouldn’t the deaths, if not attributable to the vaccine but pre-existing conditions, be equally spread out through all time periods?

3. How does the medical history for these 23 seniors compare to the medical history of those who did not die? Were there any significant differences? The range of symptoms given in the package insert can very well cover almost all seniors during the flu season. And what about those who died that were not among the “majority” who had these pre-existing conditions? A majority could simply be 12 out of the 23.

Besides death, which is just one “serious adverse event,” there were 226 other “serious” adverse events, for a total of 249 serious adverse events, out of only 3,833 participants.

If this does not constitute a dangerous drug that should probably not even be on the market, then I don’t know what does. And yet, it is sold to unsuspecting seniors and others like candy at these drug stores.

One of these other adverse side effects (besides death) is Guillain-Barré syndrome, which has symptoms similar to polio. If you are brought into an emergency room with the paralyzing effects of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), the first question the doctors will ask you is if you just received the flu shot. Read one story here of how one man went from being able to bench-press 275 pounds to struggling how to walk after receiving last year’s flu shot: Miami Man Contracts Guillain-Barré Syndrome, Nearly Dies After Getting Flu Shot. Also, if you look at the majority of damages being paid out to those damaged from vaccines in the U.S. Vaccine Court, Guillain-Barré syndrome from the flu vaccine is #1, and almost equals all other awards for damages combined. (See: Flu Shot Causes Polio-like Guillain-Barré Syndrome: Are Rates Higher Than the Government Admits?)

The CDC would like you to believe that the risk of GBS from the flu shot is only one out of one million. But if that is the case, why is there a warning on package inserts of flu vaccines, and why is it the first question EMTs ask when dealing with GBS emergencies?

The package insert for Fluzone states: “If Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) has occurred within 6 weeks of previous influenza vaccination, the decision to give Fluzone High-Dose should be based on careful consideration of the potential benefits and risks.”

I wonder how many vaccine sales people at these pharmacies give “careful consideration” to this adverse side effect, or any others, before injecting you?

Be informed this flu season! Educate yourself before vaccinating!

Thanks to ExperimentalVaccines for pointing out this package insert information on YouTube.

Leaving a lucrative career as a nephrologist (kidney doctor), Dr. Suzanne Humphries is now free to actually help cure people.

In this autobiography she explains why good doctors are constrained within the current corrupt medical system from practicing real, ethical medicine.

One of the sane voices when it comes to examining the science behind modern-day vaccines, no pro-vaccine extremist doctors have ever dared to debate her in public.

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My Story: Why Isn’t My Pain Covered?

http://nationalpainreport.com/my-story-why-isnt-my-pain-covered-8841427.html

My chronic pain treatment has not been covered since the CDC guidelines were published.

But the reasons my pain is not covered are different. It’s because of what I am. I’m an older white female.

Let me explain.

I have arthritis all over the place, yes; and this is the most common debilitating pain problem in the United States. I’ve had knee replacement surgery; my hands have had multiple surgeries for they are awash in stage IV arthritis. My spine, hips, SI joints, hips and left knee all have arthritis.

I have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect my bones and joints from both arthritis and osteoporosis. I strength train rigorously every week—as I have for 30 years. I also upholster furniture, alone, with my hands. If you saw my hands you would never suspect I have severe arthritis.

I am a psychotherapist. I specialize in treating professionals with dual diagnoses: professionals with substance use disorders. I understand addiction pretty well. I also understand professionals pretty well. And I have to say today I am ashamed to be part of my profession. Not because I am like those that precipitate these feelings in me. Because I am not like them. I am a pain patient and my pain is not being covered and I am furious and terrified about it.

My pain is literally killing me. Not lessening my will to live. Not making me depressed or anxious. MY PAIN IS KILLING ME.

Since my pain stopped being properly treated, I have been incapacitated between 24-36 hours a week, every week. It is as though I entered a time warp. I am aging at an astonishingly rapid rate. It is abnormal. Since my pain has not been adequately treated my level of functioning has declined beyond any other experience with illness that I have had. I have not been able to do my taxes in four years! Never before have I been unable to do my taxes.

I believe that one of the reasons chronic pain patients have been vilified is so that addictions professionals can have more patients and make more money. And that they are currently doing just that at the same time they fail to properly treat pain. The greed that accompanies a human being’s willingness to lay claim to a patient and keep her in pain in treatment in order to make more money is pretty repulsive to me. But I believe that is one part of the puzzle. If I was not an addiction specialist, I probably would not believe this. Imagine how popular I am in my field.

I also believe this is happening because it makes the DEA feel like they have some sort of handle on the problem identified as increased death due to opioid use. In other words, DEA agents and other people in positions of responsibility for drug control blame treating pain patients for changing the social mores, the social tolerance of opioid use. If our society had not become so lax, we would not have all these overdoses. People would not dream of using heroin laced with fentanyl if the stigma had not been altered by treating pain patients with opioids.

And there is another reason, perhaps the most significant reason why this is happening. Two social groups that suffer from chronic pain the most are aging white females and people of lower Socio-Economic-Status. two social groups are comprised of human beings that are not wanted, not valued by our society. Aging white females and people of lower SES are getting bullied by the amendment and administration of the pain policies in the United States today.

I have spoken to physicians who treat pain and their response to my challenges is pretty interesting. Upon approaching one physician with a sterling reputation for treating pain with the questions I have about the failure to treat my pain properly (I have extenuating circumstances, by the way) and he made no effort whatever to answer my questions. He met me with bristling hostility. Now, I did not approach him in the manner I am writing this article. I approached him as a humble patient suffering with pain that I do not believe is being properly medicated. I asked questions articulately and perhaps without the level of meekness he would have liked. But he just bristled with hostility. There was no way IN THE WORLD he was going to address my points. Because he couldn’t. There is no justification for the way my pain is mismanaged. And he hated me for making that clear.

My pain is not being covered because I am an aging white female being put in my place.

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If you don’t compare your med costs under Part D – YOU MAY BE VERY SORRY !

Few days ago I make the above post …

Since then I had 5 prescriptions filled for Barb and myself at the local independent pharmacy that we patronize… currently and for the last 13-14 yrs we have had Silver Scripts Part D .. .which is part of CVS Health and Caremark is the PBM… which is also part of CVS Health..  Those five (generic) prescriptions we were charged abt $130 total for all five…

I looked up the price under the website https://www.medicare.gov/plan-compare/#/?lang=en as to what the costs would be when we switch to a new Part D program as of Jan 1, 2020.

Most/many/all of the Part D prgms in 2020 will have a deductible… Those same five prescriptions under the new Part D prgm would be abt $80 during the deductible period and abt $30 after the deductible has been met.

I knew that we were paying more using our local independent pharmacy than going to a CVS pharmacy when we had the Silver Script insurance.. the closest CVS store was 8-12 miles away…while our independent is about ONE MILE AWAY and will deliver if we need it.

Sure we could use mail order to have meds delivered to our door, but have you ever looked at the label and storage requirements of any medication – including OTC’s ?  Most have a temperature storage requirement by USP, NF & FDA in the 60 F – 80F range.  The manufacturer, wholesaler and pharmacy are legally required to maintain these storage temperatures … BUT… when your prescriptions are handed off to a commercial delivery service… they have no obligation to maintain those temperature storage requirements.  When is the last time have you seen a air-conditioned USPS, Fed-X or UPS delivery truck ?

I am not disclosing which new Part D prgm we are going to because savings may very… in fact … I could have saved a few dollars by signing up for a different Part D prgm than Barb, but chose not to because I did not want to have to deal with two different programs.  The part D prgm that we signed up for indicated that I would not even have enough Rx cost to even meet the annual deductible.  No such luck with Barb’s necessary medications 🙁

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Ohio’s largest Medicaid provider cuts ties with Walgreens

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20191025/ohios-largest-medicaid-provider-cuts-ties-with-walgreens

More than half of Ohio’s Medicaid recipients will lose access to Walgreens pharmacies on Jan 1. CareSource, Ohio’s largest Medicaid provider, is cutting ties with the state’s second-largest pharmacy retailer.

Walgreens, Ohio’s second-largest pharmacy retailer, will no longer service the state’s largest Medicaid provider as of Jan 1, raising concerns about creating pharmacy “deserts” in parts of Ohio.

The news, which wasn’t announced by the Ohio Department of Medicaid, comes a week before open enrollment in the insurance program is to begin.

It also raises worries about access for Medicaid patients and about the health of the marketplace. And it raises questions about how well the administration of Gov. Mike DeWine has reformed the way the state Medicaid department reimburses Ohio pharmacies as it spends $3 billion a year on drugs.

“CareSource has decided to move forward with a network that does not include Walgreens for Ohio managed Medicaid patients in 2020,” Walgreens said in an email Friday, referring to Ohio’s largest Medicaid managed-care organization, which serves more than a million recipients. Walgreens remains in the networks of two other managed-care plans: the UnitedHealthcare Community Plan and Paramount Advantage.

State Sen. David Burke, R-Marysville, chairman of the Senate’s Health, Human Services and Medicaid Committee, said the move sends a “very strong signal” that serving Medicaid patients is a money-losing proposition for Ohio pharmacies.

Burke said he has known for weeks that Walgreens was departing.

In a Friday email, state spokesman Kevin Walter said, “Ohio Medicaid has been made aware of a potential change in the CareSource contract, but the change is still under evaluation.”

Dayton-based CareSource serves 1.2 million of the 2.2 million Ohioans who are enrolled in Medicaid managed-care plans. The company also serves Medicaid patients in Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Georgia.

Despite promises by CareSource earlier this year of transparency, the company didn’t say whether Walgreens was departing its pharmacy network. It also wouldn’t say how many of its Ohio clients use Walgreens as their pharmacy. Nor would it say whether Walgreens was leaving its networks in other states.

“CareSource continuously evaluates our provider network to ensure we are offering members excellent access to quality care,” Stephen Ringel, president of CareSource’s Ohio Market, said in an email after news of Walgreens’ departure broke. “We are in the process of reviewing our future plans with Walgreens with the Ohio Department of Medicaid and remain committed to meeting and exceeding all network-access standards while also being good stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

Since last year, The Dispatch has written numerous stories raising questions about whether CareSource’s current pharmacy-benefit manager, CVS Caremark, was providing lowball reimbursements to the corporation’s retail competitors, including Walgreens. In April, CareSource announced that it was dumping CVS Caremark in all the states where it operates and instead was hiring Express Scripts to provide pharmacy benefit manager services such as billing for drugs, reimbursing pharmacies, establishing lists of covered drugs and negotiating rebates from drugmakers.

Despite long-standing complaints that Medicaid reimbursements were so low that they were driving independent pharmacists out of business, Express Scripts in June sent out proposed contracts offering to pay them a dispensing fee of only 15 cents per prescription. The state’s own surveys showed that pharmacists needed $10 to break even. Express Scripts quickly withdrew the proposed contracts. The company declined to comment for this story.

A study commissioned by the state determined that in 2017, PBMs CVS Caremark and OptumRx billed the state $244 million more for Medicaid drugs than they paid to pharmacists.

Time is short to notify patients that they need to find a new pharmacy home, and the Medicaid population can be difficult to contact; some are homeless, some move frequently, some frequently switch phone numbers, and some have no phone, said Antonio Ciaccia of the Ohio Pharmacists Association.

And Sen. Burke, who is a pharmacist, said Medicaid patients tend to be sicker than the general population, so if they stop taking their medicines, they are likely to end up in the emergency room or a hospital bed, which can cost orders of magnitude more than their medicines.

“Those people will be blindsided” by Walgreens’ departure, Burke said.

It’s unclear what might have caused the rupture between Walgreens and CareSource. But if it’s because CareSource’s new PBM, Express Scripts, isn’t offering what Walgreens wants in dispensing fees, that’s an ominous sign for pharmacy access in Ohio, Burke said. Community pharmacies, particularly those with a large Medicaid clientele, have been closing in recent years, often blaming reimbursements that are so low that they’re losing money.

As pharmacies with lots of Medicaid patients close, pharmacists fear that those patients will move to surrounding pharmacies, plunging them into the red and causing a cascade that will result in pharmacy deserts — places where people with transportation challenges would find it difficult if not impossible to see a pharmacist. With Walgreens no longer serving most of its Ohio Medicaid patients, the problem will become far worse, Ciaccia said.

“The patients don’t disappear; they go to other pharmacies,” he said. “My fear is that the independents are taking on too much water and are about to get hit by a tidal wave.”

Because of network-adequacy rules, Burke said that Walgreens’ departure from CareSource might also leave CVS in a position to dictate the prices it wants for Medicaid drugs.

“I don’t know where we’re going to be five years from now,” he said.

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New Florida bill could require a prescription for most sunscreens

https://www.pharmacist.com/article/new-florida-bill-could-require-prescription-most-sunscreens

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Hy-Vee pharmacies implement new opioid prescription policy

https://www.channel3000.com/news/hy-vee-pharmacies-to-limit-quantities-of-opioids/1135442312

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa – Hy-Vee pharmacies will limit opioid prescriptions for treatment of acute pain to seven days starting Thursday, according to a news release.

Hy-Vee Grocery Stores said ​​​​​​the new seven-day limit “does not apply to chronic pain; pain being treated as a part of cancer care, hospice or other end-of-life care; pain being treated as part of palliative care practices; and medications used to treat opioid addiction.” Where state law or a third-party payer requires it, the limit will be less than seven days.

“We want to be part of solution, while continuing to provide needed care for customers,” senior vice president and chief health officer at Hy-Vee Kristin Williams said in a news release.

Hy-Vee said it also offers naloxone, which is used to reverse narcotic overdoses, without a prescription in all eight states where it operates pharmacies: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Naloxone is stored behind the counter and cost varies, the company said.

Hy-Vee also announced that it will be putting drug takeback containers in all 276 of its pharmacies by Nov. 7. The containers give customers a secure place to dispose of unused medications, including controlled substances.

The policy change Thursday comes months after Hy-Vee announced in January that its pharmacies would no longer allow a subsequent fill of a Schedule II controlled substance, or a refill of a Schedule III or Schedule IV controlled substance, more than 72 hours early without authorization from the prescriber.

One of the basics of the practice of medicine is the starting, changing, stopping a pt’s therapy and when that change involves a controlled substance it is a violation of the controlled substance act if the licensed prescriber has not done a IN PERSON PHYSICAL EXAM…

According to this https://pharmacy.uiowa.edu/directory/person/kristin-williams-0  senior vice president and chief health officer at Hy-Vee Kristin Williams is just a pharmacist who has worked her way up thru the ranks of the chain pharmacy Hy-Vee and according to this press release she may have been the driving force behind Hy-Vee decision to override the pt’s prescriber determination of what a particular pt’s needs for a controlled substance for acute pain.

Maybe it is time for pts who are affected by such corporate policies start filing complaints with the state’s board of pharmacy and the state’s medical licensing board and maybe the DEA…  Because there seems to be several potential breaking/violations involving the state’s pharmacy practice act, the state’s medical practice act and the Controlled Substance Act.

It would appear from this article and William’s corporate title, she is the person behind this corporate policy, but their is also at each Rx dept a PIC ( Pharmacist in charge) that is responsible to the state’s pharmacy board for the legal operation of the Rx dept…as well as the pharmacist that actually filled a controlled Rx and followed corporate policy to REDUCE the quantity on a pt’s prescription if they exceeded the corporation’s policy on absolute limits on a pt’s prescriptions for no more than 7 days for acute pain… regardless of the pt’s prescriber’s wishes.

Their statement also seems to imply that unless the chronic pain pt is being treated as a part of cancer care, hospice or other end-of-life care; pain being treated as part of palliative care practices; and medications used to treat opioid addiction… not all chronic pain pts are part of palliative care… but of course, those receiving medications for the treatment of opiate addiction… gets a automatic “pass” on days supply limits.

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Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in the US, but in some places, meth kills more

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/25/health/fentanyl-deadliest-drug/index.html

Fentanyl remains the deadliest drug in the United States. But in some areas of the country, methamphetamine kills more people.

A new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found that fentanyl is the drug most commonly identified in fatal overdoses. In 2017, fentanyl was associated with 38.9% of all drug overdose deaths, an increase from 2016, when it was associated with 29% of all fatal overdoses. This is the second year that CDC analyzed fatal overdoses in this way.

In 2017, heroin was associated with 22.8% of all fatal overdoses. Cocaine, a stimulant, was involved in 21.3% and methamphetamine, also a stimulant, was involved in 13.3%.

Other drugs linked to overdose deaths were benzodiazepines; diphenhydramine, an antihistamine; and gabapentin, an anticonvulsant.

While fentanyl was the most common drug involved in fatal overdoses nationally, there was a geographic divide, the report said. Fentanyl was the drug most likely to be involved in overdoses in states in the eastern United States, but methamphetamine was the drug most associated with overdoses in the western half of the country.

According to the CDC, overdoses death rates involving psychostimulants, including methamphetamines and cocaine, have been rising since 2010. In 2017, the number of people dying from overdoses involving psychostimulants rose above 10,000, an increase of 37% from the year before.

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Methamphetamine was the drug most frequently involved in overdose deaths in the regions that include Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada and Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

Typically, fentanyl, along with white powder heroin, has been more common east of the Mississippi River, and Mexican black tar and brown powder heroin has been more commonly found west of the Mississippi.

In 2017, the latest year for which complete data is available, more than 70,000 people died from drug overdoses. Opioids such as fentanyl and heroin represented about 68% of those deaths.

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https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6/all-actions?overview=closed&q=%7B%22roll-call-vote%22%3A%22all%22%7D

DEA Channels Stalin: ‘Suspicious Orders’ of Opioids? Just Say Nyet

https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/10/25/dea-channels-stalin-suspicious-orders-opioids-just-say-nyet-14356

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DEA Is About to Demonstrate “How Little They Know About What They Imagine They Can Design”

https://www.cato.org/blog/dea-about-demonstrate-how-little-they-know-about-what-they-imagine-they-can-design

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New technologies have potential to prevent HAIs

https://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/nosocomial-infections/news/print/infectious-disease-news/%7B521b9799-cd2c-4872-b444-b34ced54ee6b%7D/new-technologies-have-potential-to-prevent-hais

Curtis J. Donskey, MD, and colleagues at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center had a novel idea to prevent some infections in their facility.

During influenza season, patients entering the hospital coughing and sneezing can use one of the many available touchscreens to check in.

“Dozens of people in the course of the day will be touching the same screen and they are very seldom practicing hand hygiene after doing that. And what we asked is if we could come up with some automated way to decontaminate the screens with each use — that could be a useful technology,” Donskey, an infectious disease physician at the hospital and professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University, told Infectious Disease News.

The idea inspired the creation of an automated device that uses ultraviolet C light as a disinfectant to clean the touchscreens. A prototype of the device was designed by a scientist and then tested by Donskey. In his experiments, Donskey found that the UV-C device, which was designed to automatically scan the touchscreen after patient use, reduced the transmission of viruses from contaminated screens to fingertips in simulations.

Curtis J. Donskey

The UV-C touchscreen cleaner is just one of many new technologies that have been developed and tested recently to prevent health care-associated infections (HAIs).

‘One jumbo jet’s worth of people’

Although the prevalence of HAIs in hospital patients in the United States decreased from 4% in 2011 to 3.2% in 2015, they remain a significant issue for patients and health care facilities.

Each year, about 2 million Americans contract an HAI and between 75,000 and 100,000 die from one, Michael G. Schmidt, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina, told Infectious Disease News. Broken down, that means almost 300 Americans may die every day from an HAI.

“If one plane, a jumbo jet, crashed each day in the United States, would anybody fly? The answer is no. That is precisely the number of U.S. citizens who die each day from a health care-associated infection. One jumbo jet’s worth of people,” Schmidt said.

Additionally, he noted the large financial burden, observing that HAIs may cost taxpayers an estimated $150 billion per year, according to a study published in the Journal of Medical Economics.

“Imagine what we could do if we just cut that rate by 10%,” Schmidt said. “What could we do with $15 billion?

New technologies

Different types of technologies aimed at decreasing the risk for HAIs have emerged in recent years, Hilary M. Babcock, MD, MPH, president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, told Infectious Disease News.

“These technologies definitely have the potential to transform care for our patients,” she said.

Hilary M. Babcock

Many of the newer technologies use environmental decontamination to prevent the transmission of pathogens, Donskey said. Efforts have focused on developing novel disinfectants and delivery methods, no-touch devices and antimicrobial surfaces.

Bleach and quaternary ammonium disinfectants are the standard cleaning products used in hospitals. However, quaternary ammonium does not inhibit Clostridioides difficile, and bleach — while effective — can damage surfaces and irritate some patients, according to Donskey. Peracetic acid-based disinfectants have been developed as a modified solution and have been found to be effective at destroying spores and less harmful to surfaces, he said.

Because wiping down surfaces mechanically is not efficient for disinfecting irregular surfaces or an entire room, new delivery methods have been investigated, Donskey said. For example, electrostatic spraying devices might allow for more rapid and effective decontamination, he said.

Moreover, no-touch technologies are gaining traction, the most common of which are UV devices, according to Donskey. Many different UV devices have been created to decontaminate patient rooms and equipment, such as CT tables, tablets, keyboards and stethoscopes, and have demonstrated efficacy in reducing pathogens. One study published in The Lancet showed that adding UV-C light to standard terminal cleaning strategies reduced the likelihood that patients would acquire the same infection as the previous patient by 30%.

Antimicrobial surfaces also have been shown to be useful in helping rid hospital rooms of pathogens, Schmidt said. One study demonstrated that placing copper surfaces on significant touch points in the patient care environment decreased the rate of HAIs by 58%, he noted.

Many more technologies have demonstrated the ability to prevent the spread of pathogens, including novel sink drain covers, electronic hand hygiene monitors — including voice-based monitors that remind clinicians to sanitize their hands — antimicrobial catheters and antimicrobial textiles, such as surgical scrubs, hospital curtains and bed linens.

“All of these technologies are intended to prevent a wide range of infections, from common bacterial pathogens, such as C. difficile and MRSA, to fungal infections, such as Candida auris, that may be associated with contaminated surfaces,” Donskey said.

Implementation within hospitals

The move to implement new technologies in hospitals has been gradual, but more and more facilities are using them, especially UV room decontamination devices, Donskey said. In fact, a survey of health care facilities in the U.S. and 11 other countries showed that, in 2018, 37% of facilities reported using UV light for environmental cleaning.

Babcock said most infection preventionists are aware of the new technologies. The companies that manufacture them will often exhibit them at hospitals and conferences. Hospitals will consider the devices and their claims for prevention and purchase them if they are well suited for their specific needs, she said.

“One of the challenges for a lot of these technologies is to show a direct link between the use of that device and an actual decrease in infections in patients. A lot of these kinds of technologies clearly do decrease the amount of bacteria on a surface, but it can be difficult to prove that using this kind of device or technology can actually decrease infections in patients,” Babcock said.

Plus, not every hospital is in need of these types of new technologies.

“If a hospital has already done a lot of work with preventing infections after surgery then maybe they don’t need a special dressing to prevent this problem in their patients,” Babcock said.

Whether the new technologies have a significant benefit compared with emphasizing standard infection control measures is also up for debate, Donskey said. A great deal of effort goes into introducing any new technology into a hospital. Costs go up, and training health care workers to use them can be time consuming, he said. Hospitals may see a comparable reduction in infections by investing the same amount of time in improving standard infection control strategies than they would in implementing a new technology, he noted.

Regardless, the No. 1 thing that physicians and patients can do to prevent HAIs is wash their hands whenever they go in and out of a hospital room, Schmidt said.

“Simple things like practicing good hand hygiene make all the difference in the world at reducing the rate,” he said.

Infection prevention mostly relies on health care providers doing things correctly while providing care to patients, Babcock said.

“HAIs kill more people than HIV and breast cancer combined,” Schmidt said. “If we had tools like UV light, copper and hand hygiene monitors to alleviate breast cancer and HIV, we’d be out there cornering the market to end those diseases.” – by Alaina Tedesco

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