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Public disclosure of hospital infection rates varies by state

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine found that only 21 states require public recording of hospital data on surgical site infections — and even when disclosure is mandated, the information is often not easily accessible to patients.

“A lot of information is not available to the public and, if it were, hospitals would be motivated to improve,” study leader Martin Makary, MD, MPH, stated in a Johns Hopkins Medicine news release. “Right now, a hospital can have high complication rates, high readmission rates and high infection rates, but because patients can’t look up this information, they’re essentially walking in blind.”

Based on their findings, published in the Journal for Healthcare Quality, the researchers suggest the state-by-state system for reporting infection rates isn’t working — and only national guidelines governing disclosure could paint a clear picture of how well or poorly hospitals are doing at preventing patient harm, according to the release.

According to the study abstract, the authors reviewed surgical site infection (SSI) monitoring and reporting legislation as of September 2010 in all 50 states. The researchers looked at whether such legislation existed, whether public reporting was required, for which procedures SSI data were reported and how the data were accessible.

According to the findings, 21 of the 50 states have SSI monitoring and reporting legislation. While all of these states have requirements for public release of findings, 8 states (38%) have publicly available SSI data. According to the abstract, there was a range of 2 to 7 procedures reported for SSI measurement by individual states.

The release noted 6 of the 8 states reported SSI rates for knee or hip replacement surgery.

“It is important to use a common method or at minimum ensure common parameters, inputs and definitions are used,” Makary stated. “Without that, it is difficult for consumers, payers or regulators to compare infections within or across states. Unless we are comparing apples to apples, public disclosure has the potential to mislead patients instead of help them.”

Reference:

• Makary MA, Aswani MS, Ibrahim AM, et al. Variation in surgical site infection monitoring and reporting by state. J Healthc Qual. 2012. doi: 10.1111/j.1945-1474.2011.00176.x

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