Comparing hospital-acquired infection rates among healthcare facilities may have unintended consequences, including the existence of clinician adjudication panels to veto reporting of HAI events that may meet HAI surveillance definitions, according to a panel discussion published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Public data reporting may spur the existence of the panels, which are created in response to hospital desire perform highly on quality measures. One purpose of such panels is to eliminate "unimportant" HAI events through clinician judgment.
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The end result is an unintentionally inaccurate picture of hospital quality and HAI prevalence, according to the panel.
To prevent any inaccurate quality reporting, the Annals panel recommends creating strict standards for HAI surveillance data use as well as for application of HAI validation and surveillance process definitions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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