Hospitals need to get on the same page when it comes to checking for bloodstream infections among patients seeing as current methods of surveillance vary from facility to facility, according to a study published in the October 2010 American Journal of Infection Control.
"While 100 percent of the surveyed infection control practitioners in the study indicated using the CDC's definition for [catheter-associated bloodstream infections], strictly speaking, none actually do," said study co-author Dr. Matthew Niedner, an assistant professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases for Mott Children's Hospital in Michigan. "This has significant implications in the era of mandatory public reporting, pay-for-performance and Medicare's 'never events.'"
Of 10 infection control departments examined, half were inconsistent in calculating their line-days, while the other half utilized a "strict, written policy" to classify such infections. What's more, while 80 percent of facilities indicated using a "formal, written policy for obtaining blood cultures," not all of those facilities actually followed their reported policies.
"[P]hysicians and nurses concurred that the physician order is the driver of practice for blood culturing, yet there are substantial perceptual malalignments between nurses, physicians, and [infection-control professionals] regarding what precisely is done when a blood culture order is written," the study's authors write.
Ultimately, Niedner and company conclude that a more aggressive approach to bloodstream infection surveillance is needed. "The harder one looks for CA-BSIs, the more likely they are to find them," they write.
To learn more:
- here's the study's abstract
- check out this press release