Studies link infections to hospital processes

At the same time, Pennsylvania becomes the first state to release data on hospital-acquired infections at the individual facility level.

By Kevin B. O'Reilly, AMNews staff. Jan. 15, 2007.

Poor infection-control practices are more to blame for the costs, morbidity and mortality that hospital-acquired infections cause than how sick patients are at admission, according to three new studies.

The research, published in a supplement to the November-December 2006 American Journal of Medical Quality, challenges longstanding beliefs about hospital-acquired infections, said David B. Nash, MD, the journal's editor and chair of the health policy department at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

"The supplement has presented compelling evidence that it's process, process, process and that it is the system's nature of providing care that we have to attack" to reduce hospital-acquired infections, Dr. Nash said.

One study of 54 patients who acquired central-line-associated bloodstream infections at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh found that patients admitted with low-severity illnesses were infected at a similar rate to those with high-severity illnesses. Researchers also concluded that while the hospital was paid $64,484 to care for patients who contracted central-line infections, it cost Allegheny General $91,733 to provide post-infection care.

Another study of more than 180,000 surgical discharges in Pennsylvania found that while sicker patients were more likely to acquire an infection in the hospital, facility-specific factors such as hand hygiene, traffic in the operating room and length of surgery were one-third more predictive of infection rates than the severity of patients' illnesses.