Pew Urges Federal Government to Address Antibiotic Resistance, Improve Public Health Data Sharing

The Pew Charitable Trusts submitted comments June 14 to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) with suggestions to update how the agency reimburses hospitals for treating Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Pew offered proposals for CMS to help combat the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by ensuring hospitals share information on how many antibiotics they prescribe, as well as giving resource-limited facilities more time to start doing so. CMS should also support efforts to improve electronic data sharing between health care facilities and public health agencies so that those agencies can quickly recognize and respond to crises.