Health Bill

I support the thrust of the amendment, but we have got the law right and are about to get the code right. What is important now is ensuring that the fine words are put into practice in hospital environments up and down the country. Before Report, I visited Stafford hospital to talk to hospital staff about protection for patients and visitors to hospitals against health care-associated infections. It was heartening to see that some of the measures that we are debating are already being used in practice. For example, amendment No. 12 suggests that a lead person on the board should take responsibility for that matter, which already happens at Stafford hospital. The director of clinical standards at Stafford hospital, Jan Harry, is also the director of infection prevention and control. The modern matron for surgery, Naeema Khan, takes the lead as the internal champion to develop strategies on infection prevention and control, and she has sent me a note reminding me about one or two things that they are up to at the hospital. For example, the national guidance about the ““Clean your hands”” campaign has been taken to heart in the hospital, where there is now a network of hand-washing champions, who are role models for staff, visitors and patients. To gain community involvement—no doubt this is true of many hospitals—there has been a competition in schools to design posters for the walls of the hospital. That is a sensible way of trying to capture the public’s attention, and hopefully people will consider their cleanliness when they are admitted to hospital or visit other patients. Among the many documents reminding hospitals how they should behave, there is now revised guidance on contracting for cleaning. Naeema has informed me that Stafford hospital will be a pilot site for a new ward-cleaning management system and that the relevant preparatory work is under way now. In Committee, I discussed capturing information on the level of infection in hospitals, which involves testing and early analysis. Stafford hospital has superb on-site laboratory facilities, so there is the opportunity, with the right guidance, to follow best practice in taking samples, getting assessments, making reports and collecting information. As the hospital has pointed out, however, it could do with some help in its constant fight to keep down health care-associated infections, which requires partnerships that go outside the boundaries of hospitals. When I visited the hospital, we discussed care homes for elderly people, which provide many admissions to hospitals these days and which, like hospitals, are an environment where we might anticipate a degree of infection unless care is taken. My hospital and its partners, which include residential care providers, are willing to undergo joint screening and to export good practice from the hospital to those homes. Sadly, the hospital has found that there is a cost, and unless people feel particularly motivated, they will not incur it unless they have to. As politicians, we can take the message to potential partners and hospital trusts that there is something that everyone should do.