NCHS Communications

From: Sisk, Jane E. (CDC/OSELS/NCHS)

Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 10:21 AM

To: Magill, Shelley (CDC/OID/NCPDCID)

Cc: Fridkin, Scott MD (CDC/OID/NCPDCID); Sonnenfeld, Nancy (CDC/OSELS/NCHS)

Subject: NCHS consultation for HAI/antimicrobial use prevalence survey

Dear Dr. Magill:

To summarize the results of our conference call June 14, we discussed and came to agreement on the following:

1)      The Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP)/CDC will not be able to obtain national estimates of health-care-associated infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial use prevalence from the phase 3 survey in Emerging Infections Program (EIP) sites.

2)      The proposed survey objectives have been modified to clearly reflect that DHQP/CDC will estimate the prevalence of HAIs and antimicrobial use in a large sample of U.S. acute care inpatients within the EIP catchment area and will use experience from phases 2 and 3 to refine the survey methods.

3)      Currently it is not possible to obtain valid prevalence estimates for all types of HAIs in acute care facilities using administrative data. Comprehensive review of medical record data remains necessary at this point.

4)      Currently it is not possible to conduct an HAI and antimicrobial use prevalence survey using the existing National Hospital Discharge Survey, and none of us is aware of other nationally representative samples of health-care facilities that CDC could use to obtain national estimates of HAI and antimicrobial use prevalence in the short term.

As this project is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, given time and resource constraints, your proposed methods—to engage facilities within the catchment areas of the EIP and use EIP personnel and infrastructure to collect data—appear to be reasonable for the purposes of this work.

We look forward to an improved understanding of the relationship between HAI prevalence and hospital demographics that may allow for a more definitive assessment in the future.  In the meantime, we look forward to working with you to consider ways to make the sample of facilities representative within each EIP site, and to consider ways to maximize participation of these facilities.

Best,

Jane

jsisk@cdc.gov

Jane E. Sisk, Ph.D.

Director, Division of Health Care Statistics

National Center for Health Statistics

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

3311 Toledo Road

Hyattsville, MD 20782

telephone 1 301 458 4182

fax 1 301 458 4693