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Performance Indicators - Infection Control

St. Michael's Hospital works hard to ensure patient safety. One way that we do this is by keeping track of infection rates.

Healthcare-associated infections are infections that patients can get when they stay in a hospital, but did not come into the hospital with them.

Most healthcare-associated infections happen through the spread of microorganisms such as bacteria or viruses. These microorganisms are also found in the community, at home, in schools and work places, but some patients in hospital are more vulnerable because they have health problems.

The most common healthcare-associated infections are Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) and Clostridium difficile (C.difficile).

More information about healthcare-associated infection is available here.

Interpretation

The data below shows that our infection control program has resulted in infection rates in close range of our targets.

National and provincial targets have not been defined for these indicators. We developed our own targets based on published research about best practices in infection control.

Our targets are based on infections per 1000 patient days. Our year-to-date MRSA is 0.59, which means we have only 0.59 of a cae per 1,000 patient days, or less than six cases per 10,000 patient days.

Healthcare-Associated Infection Rates

Topic Annual 2005-2006 Year to Date 2006-2007 Target
MRSA/1000 patient days 0.64 0.59 0.43
C.Difficile/1000 patient days 0.30 0.31 0.5
VRE/1000 patient days 0.07 0.05 0.1
Current as of first quarter of 2007-2008.