The funding and organization of infection control in NHS hospital trusts: a study of infection control professionals' views.

The problems associated with hospital-acquired infection have been causing increasing concern in England in recent years. This paper reports the results of a nationwide survey of hospital infection control professionals' views concerning the organizational structures used to manage and obtain funding for control of infection. A complex picture with significant variation between hospitals emerges. Although government policy dictates that specific funding for hospital infection control is formally made available, it is not always the case that infection control professionals have adequate resources to undertake their roles. In some cases this reflects the failure of hospitals' infection control budgetary mechanisms; in others it reflects the effects of decentralizing budgets to directorate or ward level. Some use was made of informal mechanisms either to supplement or to substitute for the formal ones. But almost all infection control professionals still believed they were constrained in their ability to protect the hospital population from the risk of infectious disease. It is clear that recent government announcements that increased effort will be made to support local structures and thereby improve the control of hospital acquired infection are to be welcomed.