U.S. hospitals have made “very little progress” on eliminating health care-associated infections (HAIs), according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) annual National Healthcare Quality Report, which concludes that infection prevention and patient safety efforts deserve “urgent attention.” The congressionally mandated analysis tracked trends in the U.S. health care system’s performance in 2007 on more than 200 measures across four areas of quality: effectiveness, safety, timeliness and patient focus of care. Overall, health care quality improved by 2.3%, Modern Healthcare reports. However, data specific to HAIs revealed that rates for certain infections had worsened across the previous year:   Postoperative sepsis, or bloodstream infections, increased by 8%;   Postoperative catheter-associated urinary tract infections rose by 3.6%; and   Selected infections due to medical care increased by 1.6%.   However, the report found that rates of postoperative pneumonia improved by 12% and found no change in the number of bloodstream infections associated with central venous catheter placements. Despite renewed focus on HAI prevention, these findings show that the health care system is not achieving the “more substantial strides” needed to address quality shortfalls, according to AHRQ’s director. However, she highlighted proven strategies that have shown “remarkable success” in reducing infection rates, the New York Times reports, including the Michigan Health and Hospital Association Keystone Center project, which introduced standardized procedures across 100 participating ICUs and significantly reduced central line-associated bloodstream infections