Monterey, CA Antibiotic Resistant Infections A Big Worry For The CDC : Hospitals Overprescribing

As part of health care reform, the government is trying to get some sort of consistency over how patients with the same disease are treated, as well as implementing some sort of pricing parity so that you aren't charged 3x the amount at one hospital for the same procedure you would get at another facility.  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has recently warned that doctors in some hospitals have been prescribing up to three times as many antibiotics as physicians at other hospitals.  This can be extremely dangerous, leading to antibiotic resistant infections, which are also known as superbugs.  A federal study which was released yesterday found that in about one-third of cases, prescriptions to treat urinary tract infections were given either without proper testing or evaluation or prescribed for too long.  The CDC is extremely worried about this situation given that about 23,000 Americans are dying each year from an antibiotic resistant infection.