Imagine that you’re a Presidential candidate running for office in today’s electoral environment. Now imagine if you came before the American public and informed them that you were aware of an event that would kill as many Americans as died on 9/11...and that you had the knowledge in hand to stop it in its tracks.

And that you could do it again—six times a year—year after year after year.

And to make the story better...you could save the taxpayer money doing it.

You think the voters would be in favor of that?

Well, voters, get ready to be in favor of that; because today I bring to you a relatively cheap, relatively easy plan that will save more than 18,000 American lives a year.

How do we do it?
By making MRSA in the healthcare system a virtual thing of the past.

Follow along and you’ll leave with useful facts, solid answers ...and examples of how the plan is already working.

MRSA (Methcillin Resistant Staph Areus) is on the rise in many communities. This is because doctors give out way too many antibiotics and it is causing resistant strains of bacterial infections to develop. This disease is hard to treat because it is resistant to easy antibiotics and only the more expensive antibiotics will treat it. Or that is the dogma we hear. Just one thing gets in the way of that story…the facts.

We began a story this week that describes how poor clinical practice in a State-operated healthcare facility holds the potential to cause great injury and death to those vulnerable adults living in the facility, the workers charged with their care—and to members of the public who have never even set foot in the facility.

You might say it’s a bit of a “canary in a coal mine” situation, with pandemic flu hovering on the horizon and all. You also might say that since MRSA kills as many people in the US every year as six 9/11s the pandemic is already here.

So in today’s second installment, we’ll look a bit further: into facility management that now contends they are not required to follow guidelines that the Centers for Disease Control says “apply to all patients, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status, in any setting in which healthcare is delivered”…into the concept that where your care is delivered should determine what protective equipment workers might require…and into a “magic ambulance” that apparently has the power to make you hazardous to some people--but not to others.

It has been the practice of your friendly fake consultant to keep my personal life separate from the stories you see in this space; and where exceptions have been made it has been because I felt it necessary to tell a larger story.

The story we will begin to tell today must be offered with my own life deeply intertwined in the narrative.

Sadly, it will not just be me that will be affected by the events we will here discuss. Instead, the list of victims will include some of Washington State’s most vulnerable citizens—those developmentally disabled individuals who reside in the State’s “Residential Habilitation Centers”--and the workers who care for them…one of whom is my very own spouse.

We have within the tale all the usual suspects: a lack of safety equipment, managers who fail to do their jobs, a system that’s failing to protect either its own or those who can’t care for themselves…and now, just to give things a twist, pharmaceutical soap, little orange pills, and color-safe bleach.