The ACT has the third highest rate of patients contracting potentially-fatal bacterial blood infections while staying in public hospitals, a new report finds.
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It also shows the ACT has made significant progress reducing the rate of infection over the past five years and is meeting national targets.
Staphylococcus aureus – or golden staph – is a common bacterium that can be transmitted to patients by doctors or nurses who do not follow hygiene protocols.
It enters the bloodstream through open wounds or the insertion of devices such as catheters and has a fatality rate of around 80 per cent if untreated.
The rate of infection, measured as the number of cases per 10,000 days of patient care, is used as an indicator of the safety and quality of a hospital.
Western Australia's public hospitals had the highest rate in the country with 0.90 cases per 10,000 days of care, according to the report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIWH).
Tasmania was second highest with 0.89 cases followed by the ACT (0.79), New South Wales (0.75), Victoria (0.71), Queensland (0.69), South Australia (0.67) and the Northern Territory (0.58).
Each area was well below the nationally agreed benchmark of 2.0 cases per 10,000 days of care and the total number of cases nationwide has dropped from 1,732 in 2011-12 to 1,440 in 2015-16.
The ACT's two public hospitals, Canberra and Calvary, had Australia's highest rate of staph infection in a 2014-15 report published by the AIWH. In that timeframe the ACT had 0.84 cases per 10,000 days of care.
But Professor Peter Collignon AM, an infectious disease expert at Canberra Hospital, said the most recent results demonstrated a concerted push to combat the issue.
"At [Canberra Hospital] we were the first place in Australia that put in a programme where everybody who had a bug in their blood would be followed up," he said.
"We look at every case. We've dropped the number of cases from about 120 a year to about 35. This is as the hospital is getting busier."
Professor Collignon said relatively simple steps taken to reduce infections were having an enormous impact.
"If you've got 100 people with staph in their blood, about 20 per cent will die.
"Even with good care there is a lot of death and those that recover have a lot of suffering.
"So getting these numbers down saves lives. And the 80 per cent that survive have a major improvement."
The ACT was a national leader in many of the measures it had put in place, Professor Collignon said.
"One of them is hand hygiene. It's still not perfect but rates have improved. The other thing is having better controls on intravenous catheter use.
"A really important thing is that every person with a bug in their blood is reviewed in hospital and there is feedback to the doctors and nurses in charge.
"This changes protocols and changes practices. We are a nationwide leader in these measures."
While it was impossible to completely stamp out infections in a hospital environment, it did not mean efforts should not be made, Professor Collignon said.
"Yes you can say they are inevitable. Some are, but not all of them.
"You need to keep on examining the causes. That is the only approach that will have a long-term effect.
"Investigate every case of infection and look at what you can change. You can make a difference."
