For the first time, golden staph, or Staphylococcus aureus, infection rates for all Australian public hospitals have been posted on the Federal Government's MyHospitals website. In the year to May, Canberra Hospital had 24 golden staph cases, or 1.06 per 10,000 days of care.

Calvary Public Hospital had five cases, or 0.6 per 10,000 days of patient care and Queanbeyan Hospital had no cases. The national benchmark for golden staph infections is no more than two cases per 10,000 days of care.

Golden staph blood infections are often associated with surgery and invasive procedures and some strains can be resistant to antibiotic treatment.

Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney had 1.65 cases per 10,000 days of patient care and Royal Prince Alfred had 1.68 cases per 10,000 days of care.

Westmead Hospital in Western Sydney had 2.48 cases per 10,000 days of care and Sir Charles Gardiner in Perth 2.12 cases per 10,000 days.

Canberra Hospital infectious diseases specialist Professor Peter Collignon said not all health professionals believed golden staph infection rates should be reported publicly but he believed the reports could help drive improvements within hospitals.

''I think it does drive change, both at a political level and at a level in the hospital, because you want to work in an institution that looks good,'' Professor Collignon said.

''So if your institution doesn't look as good as other comparable institutions, then you tend to drive change within your institution to make improvements.''

Professor Collignon said there were up to 7000 golden staph cases in Australia each year and they could be extremely serious.

''If you have golden staph in your blood there is a 20 per cent chance you will not survive the next 30 days. And if it's [antibiotic] resistant, the risk is even higher,'' he said.

Professor Collignon said golden staph cases had almost halved at Canberra Hospital over the past 12 years.

He believed they could be at least halved again if more effort was made to do things such as encouraging staff and visitors to clean their hands using alcohol-based hand rub. ''This is one of the things that we think if it is being followed, we will get a reduction,'' he said.

''If we're better with intravenous catheters - if we taken them out early, we don't put in the wrong one, we can drop the numbers.''

Chief Minister and Health Minister Katy Gallagher said infection rates were higher at the Canberra Hospital than at Calvary because Canberra dealt with complex and major trauma episodes which had higher probability of hospital acquired infections.

''Notwithstanding this, the Canberra Hospital continually seeks to further minimise rates of infection,'' Ms Gallagher said.