Hospital hygiene in an age of Diagnostic Related Groups (DRG), Protection against Infection Act (IfSG), Book V of the German Code of Social Law (SGB V) and administrative reforms - facts and visions from Bavaria.

Since 1 January 2001, German hospitals and establishments engaged in outpatient surgery are obliged to continually record and evaluate nosocomial infections and the emergence of nosocomial pathogens showing special resistance and multi-resistance profiles. A survey conducted among 164 hospitals revealed that 79 % of establishments already carried out separate surveillance and evaluation of postoperative wound infections, while 77 % also recorded nosocomial infections and 91 % recorded pathogens with special resistance and multi-resistance profiles. However, only the larger hospitals had their own in-house infection control physician, while the smaller establishments generally consulted external infection control physicians. When asked how long such experts made their services available to the hospitals, no clear answer was given. Furthermore, only two-thirds of hospitals had their own infection control nurses (most of whom worked part time). These findings have induced the State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL) in Bavaria to expand its advisory and information services and to formulate standards in consultation with partners at state level. The public health offices are legally obliged to supervise infection control policies in hospitals and medical establishments. These supervisory activities have not always been conducted in a uniform manner, thus engendering anxiety among the institutions to be supervised when it comes to discharging their prescribed duties. A concept devised to improve and standardize the monitoring of hospital hygiene is to be used to standardize supervision of infection control practices (by the statutory authorities). With the incorporation of the, hitherto, State Office for Occupational Safety, Occupational Medicine and Safety Engineering into the LGL, the specialist centers for public health and the Trade Supervisory Office will be united under one umbrella. The idea is to avail of the resulting improved cooperation possibilities, so as to avoid duplication of effort as regards the overlapping areas of medical and trade supervision and limit contradictory commentaries and avoid a situation whereby several public health officials have to pay visits to the various establishments. This will also reinforce partnerships between medical establishments and the public health authorities at local level. Some thirty years ago, while the present author could possibly dream of such an outcome when he took his first steps into the, at times arduous, terrain of hospital hygiene, he probably would not have dared to express it.