Essentials of Public Reporting of Healthcare-Associated Infections: A Tool Kit

I have become very interested in medical errors and reporting of medical errors that I found a quality tool that addresses a similar issue, reporting infections. This article is about the publication of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Did you know that the reporting of infections disease does not have a standard rule to follow? I didn’t know that. I thought that there were rules and policies for everything. I have learned that the legislative is now trying to develop a standardized approach to help aid in more accurate reporting of HAIs. They are getting the state, infection prevention, risk management; and healthcare epidemiology all involved in developing a better method for reporting HAIs. Did you know that HAIs is a major public health problem in the USA affecting 5 to 10 percent of hospitalized patients annually, resulting in 2 million infections, 90,000 deaths and adding $4.5 to $5.7 billion in healthcare costs? I had no idea because I only thought that infectious-communicable diseases had to be reported annually not healthcare-associated infections. No one knows why theirs a problem with reporting HAIs but its believed to be because of the time frame the reports go out. Half believe it should be quarterly to dismiss any records that are out-of-date and half believe it should be annually to assure robust denominators and stable rates. I personally do not know enough to determine whether it should be quarterly or annually but I do know that whichever one will eliminate the problem of inaccurate reporting is the one they should go with.

Healthcare-Associated Infection Working Group of the Joint Public Policy Committee
Essential of Public Reporting of Healthcare-Associated Infections: A Tool Kit
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/pdf/ar/06_107498_Essentials_Tool_Kit.pdf