Hospital patients should get specially-programmed bedside telephones so that they or visitors can complain instantly to the cleaning services, the health secretary, John Reid, said yesterday.
He was launching the latest government campaign to check the spread of killer superbugs.
Rising public concern about the problem is undermining ministerial pride at slashing patient waiting lists.
Claire Rayner, the president of the Patients' Association, who caught MRSA, last week said she would have to be at death's door before entering hospital again.
In an attempt to ensure managers make infection control a top priority, trial schemes encouraging patients to challenge staff over whether they have washed their hands are to be extended nationwide. The measures, combined with more aggressive naming and shaming of hospitals with high infection rates and three-monthly inspections by patients' groups, are politically eye-catching elements in a revamped package to try to reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections.
The latest figures for the most notorious superbug, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), will be published on Thursday.
Current figures show that around 800 deaths a year in England and Wales, a 15-fold increase on a decade ago, are linked to MRSA.
Hospitals' records on other infections will be phased in from next year. At the moment hospitals have to ensure the details are clearly displayed in their own buildings.
Much of the problem comes from bacteria which are resistant to frontline antibiotics.
Infections caught during treatment probably kill 5,000 patients a year and affect around 100,000 at a cost of £1bn a year.
The National Audit Office, which has been investigating existing infection control measures, is expected to publish a highly critical report on Wednesday.
Government advisers at the Health Protection Agency recently suggested the drive to cut waiting lists has helped increase infection levels.
While the health department recognises this provides extra challenges, it says risks of infection can be reduced by relatively simple methods.
These include a significant increase in single rooms for patients, particularly for the groups most at risk, insistence on the use of alcohol-based cleaning rubs by staff, a "science summit" to promote further research and expert advice from other countries.
These were among elements announced by Dr Reid, who went the rounds of broadcasting studios to promote them.
He will also decide if the contracting-out of cleaning services could have been a factor.
He said: "Cleanliness is as important to the public as waiting times. Putting it at the heart of the NHS inspection regime and introducing a new target to cut MRSA will ensure that the whole NHS gives this issue the same high priority the public does."
From the end of next year, patients could have a choice of hospitals and cleanliness could become a major factor.
"I want NHS patients to demand the highest standards of hygiene and - since human contact is a major way infection spreads in hospital - to feel happy to ask staff if they have washed their hands."
And he told GMTV's Sunday programme that if politicians tackled the problem seriously, "you can say, 'Look, it is a problem, we are facing up to it, but for heaven's sake don't be frightened to go into hospital.'"
The Conservatives remain deeply sceptical.
Andrew Lansley, their health spokesman, in an open letter to Tony Field, the chairman of the MRSA Support Group, said Labour's new drive was a "serious admission" that past efforts had failed.
"After years of focusing on particular targets like waiting lists, only now are they focusing on infection control.
"This is made even more incredible given that a recent survey has revealed that patients care more about cleanliness than waiting times."
Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, said: "It cannot be a coincidence that while the number of cases of MRSA has been going up, the number of cleaners has been going down."
