sparingly , feed patients yogurt to replenish healthy bacteria in the gut and bathe patients daily , using a soap that maintains the natural pH of the patient 's skin , killing only bacteria that do n't belong there . Meet some of the people fighting hospital-acquired infections '' Torress-Cook is also obsessive about hygiene : Nurses clean under patients ' fingernails and brush their teeth daily . He also enlisted the hospital 's cleaning crew as part of the infection-fighting team . Rooms receive a thorough cleaning every day -- more than simply emptying the trash and mopping the floor , he says . Under Torress-Cook , Pacific Hospital 's infection rate for the so-called superbug MRSA is down to 0.01 per 1,000 discharges , 430 times better than the national average . Approximately one out of every 22 patients who checks into a U.S. hospital acquires a bacterial infection , adding more than $ 28 billion to health care costs , according to a 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . But there are signs of improvement . Pennsylvania , which requires the most extensive reporting of hospital-acquired infections , saw the annual rate
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- For years , Alfonso Torress-Cook followed the rules in his quest to eliminate hospital-acquired infections . Patients at his hospital received large doses of antibiotics and were scrubbed down with alcohol-based soaps , as he and his colleagues aimed to kill every bacterium possible . Search and destroy was the mantra . By upending conventional wisdom , Alfonso Torress-Cook was able to slash hospital-acquired infection rates . Still , patients became sick with bacterial infections after checking in . Some died . `` I never saw anything change . I saw things getting worse , '' Torress-Cook said . Torress-Cook eventually joined Pacific Hospital of Long Beach , in California , where as director of epidemiology and patient safety , he changed the rules and slashed the number of patients who become infected . Torress-Cook is part of a growing movement in medicine that no longer accepts hospital-acquired infections as inevitable complications . Every year , such infections sicken 1.7 million and kill 99,000 people in the United States . At Pacific Hospital , Torress-Cook does n't go after all bacteria , just the dangerous ones . The staff members at the 184-bed hospital use antibiotics