For years, we’ve known about the cesspool of germs, diseases, and bacteria that line hospital halls, but two new reports are shedding more light on the dirty truth.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a progress report on infections contracted during hospital stays. Efforts have been in action by agencies such as the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to decrease hospital-acquired infections, but the CDC findings show that more still needs to be done for patient safety.

The study shows a 50 percent decrease in central line-associated bloodstream infections between 2008 and 2014, but there was only an 11 percent drop in catheter-associated urinary tract infections between 2009 and 2013.

The bacteria responsible for the majority of hospital infections, Colstridium difficle (more commonly known as C. diff), only had an 8 percent decline between 2011 and 2014.

C. diff sickened 101,074 hospital patients in 2014 according to the report. Overall, C. diff infects around 450,000 people a year, in and out of hospitals, causing nearly 29,000 to die, says Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports expanded upon the CDC findings, noting that more than 3,200 hospitals are failing to contain C. diff’s reach. One-third of the hospitals earned a low rating from Consumer Reports for handling its spread, indicating that these establishments have infection rates higher than the national average.

Of those over hospitals, 24 of the country’s largest teaching hospitals made the unfortunate list, including a few notable ones:

Baylor University Medical Center
Cleveland Clinic (which was in the news recently for completing the first uterine transplant in the U.S., however, was subsequently removed due to complications)
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Mount Sinai Hospital
Harvard Medical School

CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden told NBC News that "on any given day, about one in 25 hospitalized patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection that they didn’t come in with." 2011 alone saw 722,000 hospital infections, with nearly 75,000 patients dying during their hospitalization, according to the CDC.

“More than half of these healthcare-associated infections include C. difficile infections, urinary tract infections, bloodstream infections, or surgical site infections,” the report continued.

What’s more, the germs contracted in these infections are become ever more resistant to certain antibiotics.

The solution? Frieden told NBC News it could be as simple as more hand washing, but could include improved diagnostic tests, better environmental cleaning, and faster detection of outbreaks.

Instant Insights /

CDC says infections on the decline, but not by enough

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