HAI Case Study

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

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

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