By Healthcare Facilities Today

The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in 2011, said that New Jersey healthcare organizations beat national estimates established by the CDC between 2006 and 2008 for controlling bloodstream infections, according to an article on the NJ.com website

Take a lot of sick people and put them in a place where you have healthcare workers moving from patient to patient — acting as transmitters of bacteria — and you have a blueprint for disaster, the article said.

Fighting these infections hasn’t gotten any easier, but infection-control strategies have gotten more effective.

At the Hunterdon Healthcare System in Flemington, the infection prevention department has partnered with environmental services.

Hunterdon has implemented a detection system that can determine if a surface is actually clean. The system looks for an enzyme called adenosine triphosphate. All organisms produce this enzyme, making it useful in gauging the cleanliness of a surface. 

Read the article.