Nursing

Study: Hospitals Can Improve Their Infection Rates

Nurse Leader Insider, September 27, 2018

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This article first appeared September 21, 2018 on PSQH.com.

By Jay Kumar

A new review of 144 studies found that healthcare-associated infections (HAI) can be reduced by as much as 55% through the implementation of evidence-based infection prevention and control strategies. Published in the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America’s (SHEA) journal Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the study points out that hospitals can do much more to reduce infections.

“Healthcare-associated infections come at a considerable expense to patients and families, but also cost the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $9.8 billion each year,” said Keith Kaye, MD, MPH, president of SHEA, in a release. “There have been tremendous advancements in developing strategies to prevent and control HAIs. This study demonstrates a need to remain vigilant in identifying and maintaining key infection control processes to ensure they can be optimally used to prevent infections, which in some cases are life-threatening.”

The review was conducted by researchers from University Hospital Zurich and Swissnoso, the Swiss National Center for Infection Control, who examined 144 studies published worldwide (including 56 done in the U.S.) between 2005 and 2016 to determine the proportion of HAIs prevented through infection control interventions in different economic settings. The papers reviewed studied efforts designed to prevent at least one of the five most common HAIs using a combination of two or more interventions, including education and surveillance or preoperative skin decolonization and preoperative changes in the skin disinfection protocol.

The interventions produced a 35% to 55% reduction in new infections, the researchers found. The largest effect was for prevention of central line-associated bloodstream infections; other infections studied included catheter-associated urinary tract infections, surgical site infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and healthcare-associated pneumonia.

The study’s lead author, Peter W. Schreiber, MD, a researcher from the Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology at the University Hospital of Zurich, said the review’s results show that hospitals are not doing enough to fight infections. “Our analysis shows that even in high-income countries and in institutions that supposedly have implemented the standard-of-care infection prevention and control measures, improvements may still be possible,” he noted. “Healthcare institutions have a responsibility to improve quality of patient care and reduce infection rates by effectively implementing customized multifaceted strategies and improv[ing] patient outcomes.”



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