Patient Referral Patterns and the Spread of Hospital-Acquired Infections through National Health Care Networks
نویسندگان
چکیده
Rates of hospital-acquired infections, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), are increasingly used as quality indicators for hospital hygiene. Alternatively, these rates may vary between hospitals, because hospitals differ in admission and referral of potentially colonized patients. We assessed if different referral patterns between hospitals in health care networks can influence rates of hospital-acquired infections like MRSA. We used the Dutch medical registration of 2004 to measure the connectedness between hospitals. This allowed us to reconstruct the network of hospitals in the Netherlands. We used mathematical models to assess the effect of different patient referral patterns on the potential spread of hospital-acquired infections between hospitals, and between categories of hospitals (University medical centers, top clinical hospitals and general hospitals). University hospitals have a higher number of shared patients than teaching or general hospitals, and are therefore more likely to be among the first to receive colonized patients. Moreover, as the network is directional towards university hospitals, they have a higher prevalence, even when infection control measures are equally effective in all hospitals. Patient referral patterns have a profound effect on the spread of health care-associated infections like hospital-acquired MRSA. The MRSA prevalence therefore differs between hospitals with the position of each hospital within the health care network. Any comparison of MRSA rates between hospitals, as a benchmark for hospital hygiene, should therefore take the position of a hospital within the network into account.
منابع مشابه
Hospital Networks and the Dispersal of Hospital-Acquired Pathogens by Patient Transfer
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are often seen as preventable incidents that result from unsafe practices or poor hospital hygiene. This however ignores the fact that transmissibility is not only a property of the causative organisms but also of the hosts who can translocate bacteria when moving between hospitals. In an epidemiological sense, hospitals become connected through the patients t...
متن کاملمروری بر عفونت های بیمارستانی
Nosocomial infections are those that new bomes and people are acquired them in the hospital setting and symptoms of these infections appear in hospital or after a patient has been discharged from the hospital, depending on the incubation of the infection in question. Only diseases that develop in patients who have been hospitalized for longer than 48 hours are considered true nosocomial infecti...
متن کاملIndian Medical Mission at Hajj-2016: Mass-Gathering Medicine Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunities in a Mission Posture
Introduction: Hajj is an annual mass gathering of over 3.5 million pilgrims congregating from 200 countries in the desert climate of Saudi Arabia. Mass gathering medicine at Hajj is challenged by issues of healthcare accessibility, infection control, on-site treatment, referral, evacuation, and response to disasters and public health emergencies. The Indian Medical Mission at H...
متن کاملComparison of Antimicrobial Resistance Pattern in Hospital Versus Community-acquired Infections in Pediatric Patients
Background & Objective: Nosocomial infection is one of the most daunting challenges to the global health care system. The current study aimed to compare the antimicrobial resistance pattern in hospital versus community-acquired infections in pediatric patients in Besat Hospital, Hamadan, Iran. Materials & Methods: The current study was carried out on all patients with a hospital-acquired infec...
متن کاملEvaluation of HIV/AIDS clinical care quality: the case of a referral hospital in North West Ethiopia
OBJECTIVE To assess the quality of clinical care provided to patients with HIV in Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital. APPROACH AND DESIGN: Normative evaluation based on Donabedian's structure-process-outcome model of health care quality. Cross-sectional STUDY DESIGN was employed to gather data in September 2007. SETTING Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital is a government hospital in North West Ethio...
متن کامل