The
2010 report on healthcare associated infections in Pennsylvania was recently released. Since Pennsylvania mandates the reporting of all HAIs, this probably represents the most robust data that currently exist. The most important statistic in the report, I think, is that 1.1% of patients admitted to acute care hospitals developed an infection. That shows tremendous progress since previous studies estimated that 5-10% of patients developed nosocomial infections. Of the infections reported in Pennsylvania, over half were surgical site infections, 20% were urinary tract infections, and bloodstream infections accounted for approximately 10%.
Graphic: Leica News
Confused. It looks like SSIs were 27% of HAI (Figure 1, Table 1). Probably I'm looking at the wrong data. The major flaw of this report (which would prevent me from citing it) is that the length of stay and economic calculations most certainly include outcomes that manifest prior to the infections. Thus, those estimates are bo-oh-oh-oh-gus (as the car talk guys say)
ReplyDeleteYou are looking at all hospital types (includes rehab and psych hospitals). My comments were limited to acute care hospitals. Agree that the LOS and economic calculations aren't worth looking at, and I'm not sure why they would even include those data without risk adjusting. Since this is a report designed for the public I think that is very misleading.
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