Healthcare-Associated Infections Data Analysis and Presentation Standardization Toolkit

Key Objectives:
This session will feature a discussion of the final version of the Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) Data Analysis and Presentation Standardization Toolkit, strategies for implementing the toolkit in health departments, and mechanisms for evaluating the toolkit.

Brief Summary:
Numerous organizations including state health departments, federal agencies, and consumer groups analyze and disseminate HAI surveillance data from the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN).  Stakeholders use NHSN data to identify prevention opportunities, summarize HAI trends, inform consumers, and develop plans and policies for reducing infections, among other purposes. Although multiple groups use the same data source (NHSN), their analytic methods and presentation styles can vary, thus potentially leading to conflicting results, consumer confusion, and misinterpretation of the data. CSTE passed a position statement (13-ID-02) in June 2013 highlighting the immediate need for a standardized approach to HAI data presentation and analysis. In response, a multidisciplinary workgroup consisting of HAI program staff and communication experts from CDC and state health departments has met for the past year and a half to develop a toolkit of best practices for the analysis and display of HAI data, including considerations for improving accessibility of an HAI public report to a non-professional audience. The toolkit provides recommendations for the presentation of data on device-associated infections, surgical site infections, laboratory-identified events, as well as healthcare worker influenza vaccination summary data. While the toolkit focuses primarily on presenting standardized infection ratios (SIRs), additional considerations are provided for the display of other metrics. A range of communication strategies and model HAI reports are provided that take into account variation in state legislative or regulatory mandates that stipulate what HAI data must be reported.  Differences in HAI surveillance infrastructure across state health departments are acknowledged and technical resources are provided to aid states with less surveillance capacity. States and other organizations are encouraged to incorporate the principles from this toolkit into their HAI reports, dashboards, and data analyses.  Greater uniformity in HAI data analyses and presentations will enhance the value of summary statistics for multiple users and uses.