Nosocomial or healthcare-associated infection (HAI) occurs when a patient receiving treatment in a health care setting develops an infection secondary to their original condition. These infections are serious and costly adverse outcomes of medical care that affect nearly two million people in the United States annually and lead to substantial morbidity and mortality. With increased days of hospitalization and direct medical costs, HAIs account for an estimated $20 billion per year in national health care expenditure every year. As such, they present one of the major threats to patient safety and remain a critical challenge to public health. On any given day, approximately [one in 25 patients] contracts at least one infection while receiving …show more content…
The debate over public disclosure often pits consumers, insurance carriers, and health maintenance organizations (the payers) against healthcare providers. The payers want performance data made available so that they can be better purchasers of healthcare services. Healthcare providers are concerned that the data may be flawed and misleading. Personnel at healthcare institutions also are concerned about the additional cost for resources that will have to be expended to collect the required data. The stakes may be even higher because results of these analyses conceivably can be used by health plans to choose among competing providers or incorporated into the reimbursement process (pay for performance). [Nevertheless,] support comes from consumer advocates/advocacy groups arguing for publicly available data, on the basis of a right to know,/who argue the public has the right to be informed, and from others who view HAI as preventable and hope public disclosure will delivers an incentive to healthcare providers and institutions to improve their …show more content…
Research shows that when healthcare facilities, care teams, and individual doctors and nurses are aware of infection problems, and take specific steps to prevent them, rates of some targeted HAIs can decrease by more than 70%. Participation in an ongoing system, established for monitoring and consumer reporting of health outcome data, [has resulted in] reduced rates of HAI, improved hospital outcomes, and reduced mortality, overtime. [For example / Studies have reported that,] compared to states with no reporting requirement, those units in states with voluntary reporting systems or with longer periods of mandatory reporting experience had higher infection rates at baseline and/[but] greater reductions in HAIs within six months. [That said / Still,] the challenge remains [however,] that [state legislation / current practices] varies widely regarding which HAIs to measure and report, how the data are collected and analyzed, and the public availability of disclosed
The Texas Medical Institute of Technology, through programs such as Chasing Zero, is bringing a public voice to the issue of healthcare harm. The documentary is a stirring example of the quality issues facing the healthcare system. In 2003, the NQF first introduced the 30 Safe Practices for Better Healthcare, which it hoped all hospitals would adopt (National Quality Forum, 2010). Today the list has grown to 34, yet the number of preventable healthcare harm events continues to rise. The lack of standardization and mandates which require the reporting of events contributes to the absence of meaningful improvement. Perhaps through initiatives such as those developed by TMIT and the vivid and arresting patient stories such as Chasing Zero, change will soon be at hand.
Odom-Forren, J., & Hahn, E. J. (2006, February). Mandatory reporting of health care-associated infections: Kingdon’s multiple streams approach. Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, 7(1), 64-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1527154406286203
In this day and age, the general population assumes that when someone is hospitalized the risk for getting a new infection while in the hospital is minimal. However, in the United States the risk for gaining a hospital-associated infection has become a serious concern and a costly one at that. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that hospital-associated infections have cost an estimate of 35.7 to 45 billion dollars to United States hospital when 20% of these infections could have been preventable with the correct interventions. One of the most common hospital-associated infections has become hospital-acquired pneumonia. (Scott II, 2009) This type of pneumonia is easily preventable if healthcare workers would comply with a few simple interventions that should already be in place in their facility. While these interventions have been proven effective, full compliance is still lacking and in the end it is being left to up the health care staff to become aware of the results.
Scott, II, R. D. (2009). The direct medical costs of healthcare-associated infections in U.S. hospitals and the benefits of prevention. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/hai/pdfs/hai/scott_costpaper.pdf
Scott II, D. R. (2009). The direct medical costs of healthcare-associated infections in U.S. hospitals and the benefits of prevention. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/HAI/pdfs/hai/Scott_CostPaper.pdf
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are preventable and pose a threat to hospitals and patients; increasing the cost, nominally and physically, for both. Pneumonia makes up approximately 15% of all HAI and is the leading cause of nosocomial deaths. Pneumonia is most frequently caused by bacterial microorganisms reaching the lungs by way of aspiration, inhalation or the hematogenous spread of a primary infection. There are two categories of Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia (HAP); Health-Care Associated Pneumonia (HCAP) and Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).
This literature review will analyze and critically explore four studies that have been conducted on hand hygiene compliance rates by Healthcare workers (HCWs). Firstly, it will look at compliance rates for HCWs in the intensive care units (ICU) and then explore the different factors that contribute to low hand hygiene compliance. Hospital Acquired infections (HAI) or Nosocomial Infections appear worldwide, affecting both developed and poor countries. HAIs represent a major source of morbidity and mortality, especially for patients in the ICU (Hugonnet, Perneger, & Pittet, 2002). Hand hygiene can be defined as any method that destroys or removes microorganisms on hands (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009). According to the World Health Organization (2002), a HAI can be defined as an infection occurring in a patient in a hospital or other health care facility in whom the infection was not present or incubating at the time of admission. The hands of HCWs transmit majority of the endemic infections. As
Doctors, hospitals and other care providers dispute that they should have access to the medical records and other health information of any patient citing that they need this information to provide the best possible treatment for proper planning. Insurers on the other hand claim they must have personal health information in order to properly process claims and pay for the care. They also insist that this will provide protection against fraud. Government authorities make the same arguments saying that in providing taxpayer-funded coverage to its citizens, it has the right to know what it is paying for and to protect against fraud and abuse. Researchers both medical and none nonmedical have the same argument saying that they need access to these information so as to improve the quality of care, conduct studies that will make healthcare more effective and produce new products and therapies (Easthope 2005).
Hospital acquired infections are one of the most common complications of care in the hospital setting. Hospital acquired infections are infections that patients acquired during the stay in the hospital. These infections can cause an increase number of days the patients stay in the hospital. Hospital acquired infections makes the patients worse or even causes death. “In the USA alone, hospital acquired infections cause about 1.7 million infections and 99,000 deaths per year”(secondary).
...s and measurement to decrease healthcare- associated infections. American Journal Of Infection Control, pp. S19-S25. doi:10.1016/j.ajic.2012.02.008.
Nosocomial infections also known as healthcare associated infections (HAI’s) are infections that patients get while receiving treatment for another condition in a healthcare facility. In 2011, there were an estimated 722,000 HAIs in U.S acute care hospitals and of those about 75,000 died (CDC, 2014).The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) estimates the financial burden attributable to HAIs to be between $28 billion to $33 billion each year.
Patient safety must be the first priority in the health care system, and it is widely accepta-ble that unnecessary harm to a patient must be controlled.Two million babies and mother die due to preventable medical errors annually worldwide due to pregnancy related complications and there is worldwide increase in nosocomial infections, which is almost equal to 5-10% of total admissions occurring in the hospitals. (WHO Patient Safety Research, 2009). Total 1.4 million patients are victims of hospital-acquired infection. (WHO Patient Safety Research, 2009). Unsafe infection practice leads to 1.3 million death word wide and loss of 26 millions of life while ad-verse drug events are increasing in health care and 10% of total admitted patients are facing ad-verse drug events. (WHO Patient Safety Re...
If insurance companies had accessibility of every individual’s health information the company would charge for high premiums because of complicated congenital health issues of consumers (patients). Millions of individual’s die annually from non-communicable diseases, e.g. cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic lung diseases and the sort. This occurs in two-thirds of the estimated fifty-six million demises yearly internationally in addition one quarter of transpires before the age of 60. However, “Georgia states it is encountering decreasing number of healthcare providers as the number of people in need of care continues to ri...
The Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Program is an essential force maximizing quality, patient centered care, and safety throughout the Veterans Affairs North Texas Health Care System (VANTHCS). The VANTHCS “... is a progressive health care provider in the heart of Texas ... we serve more than 117,000 Veterans and deliver 1.4 million outpatient episodes of care each year to Veterans in 38 Texas counties and two counties in southern Oklahoma” (“VA North Texas,” 2016, para. 1). The purpose of the IPC Program is to guide a facility-wide approach toward identifying, preventing, controlling, and eliminating healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). This approach is facilitated through infection control (IC) practitioner’s role-modeling behaviors of assessing, supporting, guiding, and/or directing healthcare providers (HCPs) in the application of evidence-based practices (EBPs) to prevent HAIs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HAIs are often preventable adverse events that pose a major threat to patient safety (“Centers for Disease,” 2016). As a result, IC practitioners recognize the importance of preparing nurse faculty to engage clinical staff in the application of EBPs to prevent infections.
Avoiding infection or, at least, breaking the chain of transmission is vital in any setting, but more so in healthcare environments where infections and vulnerable hosts are moving under the same roof. What needs to be done, then?