Governmental Intervention Needed to Ensure Hospital Mattresses Get Cleaned Appropriately

Edmond Hooker, MD, DrPH, professor, Health Services Administration at Xavier University, and emergency physician at the University of Cincinnati, stresses that the FDA and the CDC need to intervene to ensure that hospital mattresses get cleaned appropriately.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

“I really do believe that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) need to make an emergency of [hospital mattresses not being cleaned as well as they should be] and manage it.

This is the endoscope problem; it’s the exact same thing. People ignored it, and all of a sudden, we started piling up dead bodies. Guess what? We’ve got more dead bodies piling up from Clostridium difficile every day than any endoscope-related problem. And yet, they’re not managing it.

I think the CDC and the FDA need to say, ‘Immediately, you will high-level disinfect beds, mattresses—the whole thing. We’ve got to stop this. We can stop this.’ We’ve tried meeting with them. They’re like, ‘You know, it takes a long time to change regulations.’ And I get that, I understand bureaucracy, and I also understand that if they really see the emergency for what it is, they could change these regulations in months, not years.”