A news investigation conducted by The Times takes a hard look at Washington hospitals’ failure to contain the deadly antibiotic-resistant germ called MRSA from infecting patients. After searching through millions of electronic hospital records, death certificates and other documents, reporters found that the number of Washington hospital patients infected with MRSA has grown from 141 to 4,723 annually over the past decade. One measure that could be applied in order to stop the spread could involve testing patients for MRSA before their procedures. For $20, the test tells hospitals who’s infected or a carrier, and the ones in this situation could be isolated from other patients and treated for the bug so it doesn’t wreak havoc on their own bodies once they’re on the operating table.

Times reporters found that most patients don’t get tested or, best case scenario, a very small number of them gets tested. For example, the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle routinely screens patients having elective surgery, but not the ones in the ICU and the Washington Medical Center tests only premature babies. In their defense, hospitals argue that testing all of the patients would take too many resources, ultimately to the detriment of patient safety, to focus so heavily on testing for one germ. Furthermore, hospitals lack staff, lab resources or space for testing.

Another disturbing fact found by The Times shows that some nurses or doctors do not wash hands or even wear a surgical mask. In addition, they saw a nurse who dropped two packets of pills on the floor, picked them up, put them in a cup and then gave them to a patient. Meanwhile, MRSA is infecting and killing more people this year than ever before.