By Mondo Times editors
Boulder, Colorado USA
Posted on August 10, 2009 at 3:28pm

Seattle Times Earns Public Service Award for Hospital Staph Germ Investigation

-- An investigation into the spread of a deadly drug-resistant staph germ at hospitals in Washington state earned The Seattle Times a Public Service Award on August 3, 2009 from the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

In "Culture of Resistance," the newspaper uncovered 672 deaths from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, that had been undisclosed to relatives and the public. The report also revealed that the number of patients treated each year for MRSA had increased from 141 to 4,723 in just 10 years.

In uncovering the staph germ epidemic, The Seattle Times had to fight for records and made many of those documents available to readers in a searchable database. By the end of the three-day series, the state said it would require hospitals for the first time to report all cases linked to MRSA. The project also resulted in new state laws requiring hospitals to screen at-risk patients for MRSA and providing for surprise hospital inspections.

"The Seattle Times' reporting will save lives, and that is public-service reporting at its best," the judges said in making the award.

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