The Massachusetts Public Health Council voted to require hospitals to report rates of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) for an online report card to be posted on a state government Web site. Consumers will not only be able to view the infection rate of their local hospital but compare it with those of other hospitals in the state.
The state Department of Public Health (DPH) will send inspectors into hospitals to ensure they are following required infection-prevention procedures. Hospitals could lose their license if they don’t comply with the rule or if they continue to have high rates of HAIs.
Health officials want to make hospitals' performance more transparent so people can make more knowledgeable choices about their health care. Officials also want to increase hospials' accountability, according to DPH spokesperson Donna Rheaume.
“Whenever data such as HAI is made public, there is pressure to reduce the incidence of the events,” she said. “With public accountability and transparency, DPH would expect that infection rates will decrease.”
The council’s ruling stems from a study last year that found HAIs cost Massachusetts $473 million annually in additional health care costs.
HAIs have been on the rise in recent years. One 2005 study published in the American Journal of Infection Control estimated that as many as 2 million patients in the U.S. develop one or more HAIs annually and HAIs contribute to at least 90,000 deaths a year.
Hospitals will be required to begin reporting their HAI data to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthcare Safety Network July 1. They must also grant access rights to that data to DPH and a state center that will evaluate the data to ensure it is reliable enough for public reporting.
Hospital HAI rates will not only be posted online but will be used in DPH-generated brochures, pamphlets and other communication materials meant to better inform the public.
Massachusetts is the 14th state to require hospitals to report HAI rates, and 16 other states have legislation pending.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
