Wednesday, January 13, 2010
New Pennsylvania report on HAIs
Pennsylvania has just released its state-wide report on healthcare associated infections (HAIs). This is the first report generated under the new rules that require all PA hospitals to use NHSN definitions and report infections occurring hospitalwide via NHSN. It covers the time period July-December 2008. The report is huge and I suspect it's a bit overwhelming for the average consumer. But it contains a large amount of data on bloodstream infections and urinary tract infections. Approximately 14,000 HAIs were reported over the 6-month period from 213 hospitals, for an overall rate of 2.84 infections/1,000 patient days. Of note, MRSA accounted for 8% of the HAIs occurring hospital-wide.
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PA should be congratulated on doing the report. HAIs are preventable, but until they're openly discussed and considered as in need of attention/prevention as are the symptoms that bring people to the hospital, we'll be left with too many infections.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Despite the fairness and validation issues that Mike recently raised (http://haicontroversies.blogspot.com/2009/12/honesty-and-fairness-in-public.html), transparency and public reporting raises the profile of the issue and motivates change, engages senior hospital leadership, and should have the effect of lowering infection rates (provided validation, or the threat of it anyway, keeps hospitals honest and they don't spend all their time trying to game their rates).
ReplyDeleteI haven't checked to see how much media attention, and what kind of media attention, follows each release of data in PA, our poster-child for public reporting.