Method for measuring the incidence of hospital acquired infections

Abstract

Disclosed is a method and system for analyzing patient hospitalization data to determine a Nosocomial Infection Marker (NIM), the method comprising receiving from a database hospitalization data associated with at least one patient, calculating from the hospitalization data the number of specimens with non-duplicate hospital isolates (SNDHI) markers, calculating from the hospitalization data antibiotic utilization criteria (AUC) markers, and determining the nosocomial infection marker (NIM) for each patient, based upon the calculated SNDHI and AUC markers.

Description

[0001] Cross references to related patent applications [0002] This application claims priority based on U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 591,561, filed July 27, 2004, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 678,899, filed May 6, 2005, the aforementioned applications This specification is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Background technique [0003] A "hospital-acquired infection" is a localized or systemic disease caused by an adverse reaction to the presence of a pathogen or its toxin and that is either absent or latent on admission to a hospital. In the United States, hospital-acquired infections infect approximately 2,000,000 patients and kill approximately 90,000 patients each year. Hospital-acquired infections are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, after cancer, stroke, and heart disease. Hospital-acquired infections cost nearly $14,000 per treatment, in addition to causing death, for a total of $28 billion annually in the Uni...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0020] The subject of this patent is a method for identifying hospital-acquired infections, which solves the deficiencies of the state of the art

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