AHRQ Safety Program for MRSA Prevention

About the AHRQ Safety Program for MRSA Prevention


The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality and NORC at the University of Chicago, created the AHRQ Safety Program for MRSA Prevention to develop and implement a bundle of evidence-based infection prevention and behavioral and cultural interventions designed to measurably decrease invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections in intensive care units, non-intensive care units, surgical services, and long-term care facilities across the United States. Building on AHRQ’s pioneering work using Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) methods to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and improve antibiotic use across multiple healthcare settings, this program aims to adapt the CUSP framework to develop and implement interventions to reduce MRSA in hospitals, surgical services, and long-term care facilities.

MRSA is one of the most invasive and deadly multidrug resistant organisms. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported[1] that more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the United States each year and more than 35,000 people die as a result. As a subset of antibiotic-resistant infections, MRSA incidence stabilized from 2017 to 2020 after years of decreases, but continues to be a serious threat, with more than 323,000 cases detected in hospitalized patients and over 10,000 deaths annually. In addition, MRSA infections increased 13 percent during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.[2]

[1] CDC. Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2019. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2019.

[2] U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. COVID-19: U.S. Impact on Antimicrobial Resistance, Special Report 2022. https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/pdf/covid19-impact-report-508.pdf. Accessed August 4, 2022.

Recruitment has ended for all cohorts