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Dr. Klutts Awarded CDC Grant

September 23, 2016

Dr. Klutts Awarded CDC Grant

Multi-Drug Resistant bacteria are a rising problem worldwide. Monitoring the spread of this problem is difficult, as these organisms are detected in multiple hospital systems across the country that have no ability to communicate. The VA system is an exception, as this is a single system with facilities that span the US. "We also have an integrated database (Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW)) that allows us to follow the presence of these organisms, like Carbapenem Resistant Enterobacteriaciae (CRE) as they are detected in our VA facilities," Dr. Klutts said.

Drs. Klutts (Iowa City VA/University of Iowa), Pfeiffer (Portland VA), Jones (Salt Lake VA/University of Utah) and Evans (National VA MDRO Chief) applied for a CDC grant that was funded on 9/20/2016 (~$500,000) to standardize testing practices across multiple VA sites in multiple areas of the country and follow the presence/prevalence of these MDRO organisms using an updated algorithm through CDW. Dr. Klutts will be responsible for monitoring all microbiology labs involved are using similar methods of detection to ensure the data collected is as accurate as possible.