Urinary tract infection quality initiative lowers infection rate, leads to savings
Rochester General Health System has been providing a continuum of health care services in greater Rochester, NY, for more than 150 years. Flagship Rochester General Hospital, a 528 -bed tertiary care facility, is home to Rochester Heart Institute, recognized eight times as one of the nation’s Top 100 cardiac centers. The system includes Newark-Wayne Community Hospital (Newark, NY), the DeMay Living Center, mental health and substance abuse programs, a skilled nursing home, Independent Living for Seniors, and a network of primary care and specialized physician practices. www.rochestergeneral.org/
Situation:
An experienced user of SafetySurveillor®, Rochester General chose to concentrate on sepsis and catheter associated urinary tract infections – not necessarily to reduce costs, but to improve patient outcomes and decrease mortality. To reduce urinary tract infections, the hospital focused on patient care practices such as removing urinary catheters as soon as possible.
Solution:
Using SafetySurveillor’s electronic surveillance capabilities, the staff of three infection preventionists and a director facilitated a quality improvement initiative that looked at urinary tract infections organizationally on a hospital-wide basis. They were able to accomplish this using data from SafetySurveillor and other information that was readily available electronically – something they could not have done using a manual tracking system.
Result:
- Reduced urinary tract infections by more than 40 percent.
- At the same time, focused infection preventionists’ efforts away from the desk doing surveillance and out onto the nursing units at the bedside.
- Modestly estimated at $1,000 of additional costs for each episode of urinary tract infection, savings in one year was between $50,000 and $100,000.
- The overall hospital infection rate also decreased.
- According to data from Premier’s ClinicalAdvisor®, the medical center avoided 17 new infection cases at a cost of slightly more than $10,000 on average; in a six-month period, the medical center avoided about $186,000 in additional expenses because the cases of infections were avoided.
"SafetySurveillor is the mechanism that allowed us to be able to initiate
this project. When you’re looking at a large number of infections in a
house-wide project, especially when you’re drilling down to each of the units,
it’s impossible to do that without electronic surveillance. . . . We did a very,
very modest estimate of our savings but for credibility with administration, I
always use a lowball figure. . . . SafetySurveillor is definitely on the cutting
edge. We’ve been pleased. We’ve been very, very satisfied."
Linda Greene, RN, MPS, CIC, Director of Infection Prevention
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