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California State Senator Introduces Bill That Would Mandate Reporting of 'Superbug' Infections, Deaths (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A California state senator introduced a bill on Monday that would mandate reporting of antibiotic-resistant infections and deaths and require doctors to record the infections on death certificates when they are a cause of death. The legislation also aims to establish the nation's most comprehensive statewide surveillance system to track infections and deaths from drug-resistant pathogens. Data from death certificates would be used to help compile an annual state report on superbug infections and related deaths. In September, a Reuters investigation revealed that tens of thousands of superbug deaths nationwide go uncounted every year. The infections are often omitted from death certificates, and even when they are recorded, they aren't counted because of the lack of a unified national surveillance system. Because there is no federal surveillance system, monitoring of superbug infections and deaths falls to the states. A Reuters survey of all 50 state health departments and the District of Columbia found that reporting requirements vary widely. Hill's bill would require hospitals and clinical labs to submit an annual summary of antibiotic-resistant infections to the California Department of Health beginning July 1, 2018; amend a law governing death certificates by requiring that doctors specify on death certificates when a superbug was the leading or a contributing cause of death; and require the state Health Department to publish an annual report on resistant infections and deaths, including data culled from death certificates.
Bacteria are one of several types of "bugs", in the language of the unwashed masses. I know of no bacterial species (if "species" is appropriate for bacteria) which is not "resistant" to a large number of chemicals (any chemical can be a "drug", I suppose with the arguable exception of water). So, there are no bacteria which are not "superbugs". The problem with this legislation, as you point out, is establishing the technical standards to classify a particular strain as "super" or not. Last I heard, those little nasties are mutating constantly. I suspect, but I don't know, that the vast majority of supposed "superbugs" are diagnoses by elimination. That is, well, we gave Mr X a 40mg dose QID IV of pathcin Z and he died, so he must have had a superbug.
The most likely reason I can see for government to gather this kind of information is as a precursor to legislation to limit the use of antibiotics. And possibly to mandate full courses of treatment under penalty of law. This strikes me as an attempt to create a BSA, modeled on the TSA, a huge federal bureaucracy which impacts most of us negatively, but occasionally - rarely, actually - will be useful.