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MRSA fears see rise in London "Care at Home" enquiries

One of London’s leading providers of care workers and nurses, Strand Nurses Bureau is reporting a noticeable rise in enquiries from Londoners looking to access care at home for relatives seeking early discharge from hospital.

Catherine Reid, Client Services Manager of Strand said: "We are taking more calls from people worried about the recent press coverage of super bugs such as MRSA and although rates of infection have stabilised overall and in cases decreased in some hospitals, people do still believe there is a real danger of contracting a life threatening disease."

It’s a factor that government and the NHS are acutely aware of too. David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, has stated that reducing hospital-acquired infections is one of the four top priorities for the health service in 2007 while a government memo in January admitted that tackling hospital based infections was a complex issue which wouldn’t be solved easily. Catherine continued: "It sounds obvious but no matter how strict a hospital’s cleaning regime is, the fact is that hospital's are full of ill people, living in close proximity and being examined or visited by a number of different people daily, it is an environment where infections can be transferred easily."

Each year, at least 100,000 people who go into hospital in the UK get some kind of infection during their stay and despite improvements, London still has the highest rate of MRSA compared to the North East who have the lowest.

But it's elderly Londoners who are most at risk, with 69% of MRSA cases occurring in the over 65’s, and this is the group where Strand has seen the majority of its new enquiries coming from.

Catherine added: "Given their often vulnerable health and the fact that MRSA infections can prove resistant to treatment, children of parents in hospital want to get them out as quickly as possible. There has always been evidence that patients recover quicker in their own home and indeed the NHS has its own policies and procedures to ensure patients are able to leave hospital as quickly as possible. Strand has always acted as a bridge to full recovery with care from specialist nurses available at home, but what we are experiencing in the last six months is a shift in patient need and care wanted at a much earlier stage of recovery."

For further information on the services we provide contact the Strand team on 0207 836 6396.