The Institute for Health Metrics Helps Hospitals Beat Bugs with Better Data

As more pressure is placed on hospitals to reduce costs and improve patient safety, quality reporting is becoming required for health care organizations to track and prevent hospital-acquired infections. The Institute for Health Metrics (IHM) is today working with several MEDITECH customers to extract data from their current systems and put it into useable formats, thus giving caregivers the tools they need to monitor the instances of these infections and take action to keep rates low.

"Preventable infections are a widespread problem, affecting one of every 15 inpatients and causing 90,000 deaths per year," says Anita Karcz, CMO of IHM. "The average annual cost per hospital for hospital-acquired infections is nearly $600,000 for a 110-bed hospital. These costs will no longer be reimbursed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), starting next year. Hospitals have to be thinking about this, and planning for the future."

By linking to hospitals overnight through a VPN connection, IHM gathers data collected electronically in the MEDITECH system. Reports are created and then sent back through a secure Web-based interface to the hospital, where infection control practitioners and other clinical staff can review reports to find infection patterns by unit, physician, or bacteria. IHM's Infection Alerts can also give clinicians a daily snapshot of all patients who have spiked a temperature, had a culture or antibiotic ordered, or were on a ventilator or Foley catheter within the past 24 hours.

"Mandatory health care reporting legislation is now enacted, pending, or under study in all but nine U.S. states—which means many hospitals will be making reports a priority within the next few years," says Karcz. "But how can busy clinical practitioners find the data, to formulate coherent reports? They don't have to; IHM does all the work."

Shannon Davila, RN, BSN, infection control practitioner at Goodall Hospital (Sanford, ME) agrees that using IHM for reporting at her facility has made her job easier. "It's great for us because we get all the patient information we need on one screen," she says. "Working every day on the nursing unit, sometimes it's hard for us to see the big picture of what's happening. With the reports, we have a much better idea of who's at risk for infections and what preventative measures we should take."

Karcz adds that quality reports can improve a hospital's bottom line, as well. "By preventing even one case of a catheter-related blood stream infection, urinary tract infection, VAP, and SSI infection in a 110-bed hospital, you save $59,500," she says. "And that is only for these four types of infections. There is a lot more money to be saved and many more bad outcomes to be avoided."

Virginia Caples, infection control practitioner at Emerson Hospital (Concord, MA), hopes other hospitals will also take the plunge with IHM, to free up nurse leaders for other responsibilities. "You want to be seen on the floor, building leadership credibility—not hiding away in an office collecting data," she says. "IHM helps keep nurse leaders where they're needed most, at the bedside, that's the best part about it."