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Ten Pennsylvania Hospitals Select Innovative Infection Control Technology to Better Protect Patients, Meet Public Reporting Requirements

Posted on: Wednesday, 9 January 2008, 12:01 CST

In response to state legislation that hospitals must acquire and implement a Web-based automated surveillance system to report healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), 10 Pennsylvania hospitals have taken a proactive step to ensure patient safety from HAIs.

The Premier Inc. healthcare alliance today announced 10 new hospitals contracting to use SafetySurveillor™, its Web-based tool to detect and alert staff of HAIs and protect patients by continuously tracking HAIs and antibiotic use to monitor prevention and control activities.

The Pennsylvania hospitals selecting SafetySurveillor are:

Geisinger Health System, Danville -- three hospitals;

Frankford Hospitals, Philadelphia -- three hospitals;

St. Luke's Hospital & Health Network, Bethlehem -- four hospitals.

By implementing the SafetySurveillor infection prevention system, these facilities join more than 150 other hospitals that have selected SafetySurveillor over the past year to enhance patient care. In addition, SafetySurveillor has been chosen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an HAI surveillance system software vendor participant in developing a standards-based solution for transmission of HAI data from existing commercial software systems to the agency's National Healthcare Safety Network.

"With expanded state reporting, hospitals will broaden their surveillance for infections," said Salah S. Qutaishat, Ph.D., CIC, FSHEA, epidemiologist and director of Infection Prevention and Control for Premier Healthcare Informatics. "SafetySurveillor can track these infections, enabling hospital staff to identify infections that are acquired in the community by patients, and differentiate them from those that are healthcare-associated."

HAIs are infections -- unrelated to the original reason for admission -- that patients contract during visits to healthcare facilities. Common types of HAIs include blood stream infections, urinary tract infections among patients with catheters (CA-UTI) and pneumonia among patients on mechanical ventilators. HAIs are caused by many different organisms including drug resistant organisms, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). These infections not only contribute to the illness of nearly 2 million patients and the death of another 90,000 each year, but they also account for more than $4.5 billion in excess healthcare costs.

Pennsylvania joins more than half of all U.S. states that currently require or are considering some type of public reporting of HAIs. At the national level, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced regulations that take effect in October 2008 and will not reimburse hospitals for additional costs associated with "reasonably preventable" HAIs, such as CA-UTI.

Due to the large volume of clinical data that needs to be analyzed, many hospitals have resources to do targeted surveillance of high-risk patients only. With SafetySurveillor, an automated system, hospitals have the ability to detect HAIs, alert staff and facilitate timely intervention to reduce and prevent infections.

Premier SafetySurveillor is integrated into the Premier Performance Suite™, which includes benchmarking, reporting analysis and real-time surveillance of clinical, safety, financial, operational, labor productivity and supply data. The Premier Performance Suite is powered by Perspective™, the largest integrated clinical, financial and operational comparative database in the nation, providing patient-level detail to identify opportunities for improvement in clinical quality and efficiency.

About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

Serving 1,700 U.S. hospitals and more than 49,000 other healthcare sites, the Premier healthcare alliance is working to transform healthcare. Owned by non-profit hospitals, Premier operates one of the largest healthcare purchasing networks and the nation's largest comprehensive repository of hospital clinical and financial information. A subsidiary operates one of the nation's largest policy-holder owned, hospital professional liability risk-retention groups. Premier is also working with the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West region to implement a model pay-for-performance program, called "Advancing Quality."

Nearly 200 hospitals have selected Premier's real-time SafetySurveillor™ application to prevent healthcare-associated infections and optimize antibiotic use, protecting patients and reducing hospital costs.

Headquartered in San Diego, Premier has offices in Charlotte, N.C., Philadelphia, and Washington. For more information, visit www.premierinc.com. Established to improve the health of communities, Premier and its members are transforming healthcare together.

Source: Business Wire

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