Virginia Department of Health HAI report now online

The Virginia Department of Health encouraged the public to review the 2015 Virginia Healthcare-Associated Infections Annual Report.

The HAI Annual Report summarizes the performance of Virginia’s acute care and critical access hospitals on HAIs and healthcare worker influenza (flu) vaccination. The report features hospital-specific HAI performance, and allows readers to compare the HAI performance of each Virginia hospital to that of the rest of the state and nation.  There are two versions of the HAI Annual Report: one for healthcare providers and one for consumers. In addition to hospital-specific data, both versions of the report also include fact sheets and educational materials.

HAIs are infections associated with a patient receiving medical care or treatment.  The occurrence of these infections is a public health concern that continues to pose a threat to patient safety.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 722,000 HAIs occurred nationally in 2011(the last year for which such national data is available), affecting approximately 1 in 25 hospital patients.  In 2015, all HAIs reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program also had to be reported to VDH.  The VDH report shows that, compared to predicted levels based on national baseline data, in 2015 Virginia hospitals reported:

• Fewer central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs).
• Fewer catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs).
• More surgical site infections (SSIs) following abdominal hysterectomies and about the same number of SSIs following colon surgeries.
• Fewer hospital-onset methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream infections.
• About the same number of hospital-onset Clostridium difficile laboratory-identified events.
• For the 2014-2015 flu season, 52% of Virginia hospitals met the US Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2020 goal of 90% vaccination of all healthcare workers.

“A lot of our public health work is assuring that people have the information they need to make important health decisions,” said Dr. Marissa J. Levine, MD, MPH, FAAFP, state health commissioner. “The 2015 Virginia HAI Annual Report was developed to allow healthcare providers and patients to see how Virginia hospitals are doing. These data will give healthcare facilities and public health agencies information to design, implement and evaluate HAI prevention efforts, and will also help patients be better informed in the healthcare decisions they make.”

For more information and to view the HAI Annual Report, visit vdh.virginia.gov/surveillance-and-investigation/virginia-healthcare-associated-infections-annual-report.