Staying far away from the hospital may not prevent you from being exposed to drug-resistant resistant germs after all, according to this frightening USA Today report.

Evidently, a newer strain of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), tagged with an community associated label is emerging outside of hospitals, causing serious infections in healthy adults and kids.

Amid these alarming reports, some hospitals throughout the country are taking aggressive and expensive measures to get rid of this problem, going so far as to test for MRSA among all incoming patients and to isolate and treat them as necessary. It certainly makes great cost-effective sense from a hospital's perspective, considering just one unknown case of MRSA costs some $30,000 to treat per patient, while the dollars needed to test some 40,000 incoming patients can cost as little as $600,000.

In any event, it's important for you to take steps to boost your immune system by doing a number of things, like getting the right amount of sleep, treating the stressors that sap your emotional health and starting an exercise plan today.