The VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System will lead an effort to help veterans hospitals around the nation prevent patients from being infected with MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria.

Building on their success at reducing MRSA infections, local officials will share their expertise with those from 17 other VA hospitals in Pennsylvania and other states.

Once those efforts are under way, plans call for expanding the initiative to all of the nation's more than 150 VA medical centers, said Dr. Rajiv Jain, VA Pittsburgh's chief of staff and national director of the MRSA project.

"This is a very ambitious project and we're very excited about it," Dr. Jain said.

Others involved in the effort include national VA officials and those from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Plexus Institute, Tufts University and the Delmarva Foundation.

A kickoff event will be held in Pittsburgh on Aug. 17 and 18.

"Health care-associated MRSA has been a particularly recalcitrant problem for U.S. health care facilities, and the early successes at the VA Pittsburgh are quite encouraging," Dr. John Jernigan, a CDC epidemiologist, said in a statement.

"If these successes can be replicated broadly throughout the national VA health care system, it could result in fundamental change in the way we think about MRSA prevention in this country."

Peter Perreiah, managing director of the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative, said he knew of no effort of similar scope among the nation's hospital systems.

Mr. Perreiah, who led the health initiative's work to help reduce the bacterial infections at VA Pittsburgh for several years, said hospitals have strong financial incentives to prevent the infections. Treating a serious MRSA infection can cost $36,000.

Some of the 17 hospitals are in the region's network of VA facilities. They include hospitals in Altoona; Butler; Coatesville, Chester County; Erie; Lebanon; Philadelphia; Wilkes-Barre; Clarksburg, W.Va.; and Wilmington, Del., Dr. Jain said.

The project has an $850,000 budget that will be used primarily to help the hospitals hire support staff, enhance lab testing and purchase supplies, Dr. Jain said.

To control the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, hospitals will use procedures that have been successful at VA Pittsburgh, including nasal swabs to test patients for the bacteria, he said. Patients who have MRSA typically are isolated to prevent the spread of the pathogen, which can cause serious surgical wound infections, bloodstream infections and pneumonia.