Report provides baseline that may help guide state prevention strategies and identify priorities
THURSDAY, May 27 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlined state health-care-associated infection (HAI) data during a telebriefing on May 27 to coincide with a report in the May 28 issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The report detailed state-specific and national central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) data using the standardized infection ratio (SIR) calculation. The report only included states that required reporting of CLABSIs to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), which is the CDC's HAI monitoring system, and compared national and state data between January and June 2009 with national data between 2006 and 2008.
The report is the first to outline state-specific information, and will provide a foundation that may help to guide state prevention strategies and identify priorities in infection control. The results showed that many states using NHSN for their CLABSI reporting requirements demonstrated fewer CLABSI cases than predicted in the first half of 2009. Although these results seem encouraging, states with knowledge of SIRs will potentially need additional data to adjust calculations and identify new areas where prevention efforts will likely provide the most benefit.
"This report presents an initial set of state-specific and national summary statistics for CLABSI, providing a reference point for establishing or intensifying prevention programs and serially evaluating prevention impact," the authors write. "As CDC and state departments of health work with facilities to increase participation in NHSN and extend HAI reporting, CDC will provide more comprehensive coverage of data related to HAI occurrence for analysis and action at the local, state, and national levels."
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