CMS' Hospital Compare Web site provides data on three quality measures that give a partial look into hospital-acquired infection rates but does not provide the actual rates, the Washington Post reports.
The three quality measures are:
- How often preventive antibiotics are given in the hour preceding surgery;
- How often the correct antibiotic is chosen; and
- How often the drug therapy is stopped within 24 hours.
"These measures are indicators of how well the hospitals' infection-control programs are being implemented," Lisa McGiffert, manager for Consumers Union's "Stop Hospital Infections" campaign said, adding, "But they don't tell us the results of those programs. The infection rates are what we're interested in."
The data on the measures are accessible via CMS' Web site, although it takes several-steps to obtain the information, and users have to choose which hospitals and states they would like to see data and ratings for, the
Post reports.
The CMS database does not include certain basic measures in preventing postsurgical infections, such as physicians' hand hygiene, the
Post reports. The site also does not track the actual frequency of hospital-acquired infections, Tammy Lundstrom, an infection-control specialist at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Mich., said.
Consumers Union, the not-for-profit publisher of
Consumer Reports magazine, is lobbying for a bill before Congress that would require hospitals to publish their hospital-acquired infection rates, arguing that adherence to the three quality measures varies greatly nationwide. Consumers Union on Tuesday will release analysis of data compiled by CMS that shows compliance with infection control measures for most hospitals in Maryland and Virginia (Harder,
Washington Post, 9/25).