Infection control and hospital epidemiology : the official journal of the Society of Hospital Epidemiologists of America
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Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol · Mar 2012
Multicenter StudyPrevalence of healthcare-associated infections in acute care hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida.
To determine healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevalence in 9 hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida; to evaluate the performance of proxy indicators for HAIs; and to refine methodology in preparation for a multistate survey. ⋯ HAI prevalence in this pilot was similar to that reported in the 1970s by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Study on the Efficacy of Nosocomial Infection Control. Antimicrobial therapy was a sensitive screening variable with which to identify those patients at higher risk for infection and reduce data collection burden. Additional work is needed on validation and feasibility to extend this methodology to a national scale.
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Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol · Mar 2012
Multicenter StudyThe impact of depth of infection and postdischarge surveillance on rate of surgical-site infections in a network of community hospitals.
To describe the epidemiology of surgical-site infections (SSIs) in community hospitals and to explore the impact of depth of SSI, healthcare location at the time of diagnosis, and variations in surveillance practices on the overall rate of SSI. ⋯ Inconsistent reporting methods focused on variable depths of infection and healthcare location at time of diagnosis significantly impact rates of SSI, distribution of rates of SSI, and hospital comparative-performance rankings. We believe that public reporting of SSI rates should be limited to complex SSIs diagnosed in the inpatient setting.