Answer

Week 5 and 6 Discussion

Week 5 Topic-Healthcare Acquired Infections and the CDC

            The most interesting feature of the provided Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2018_a) website is that it gives a detailed discussion of a range of infectious organisms that are often encountered within a healthcare setting and respective diseases caused by such organisms. This information guides healthcare professionals on what to include in differential diagnoses when cases of hospital acquired infections and/or diseases occur. Besides, healthcare professionals can use this information to improve targeted prevention strategies, for instance, for proper selection of prophylactic antibiotics for use by a surgery patient before/after surgery.

            Data analytics information on the provided CDC (2018_a) website can help hospitals to prevent hospital acquired infections. Data in this website informs hospitals on common nosocomial infections, how to prevent them, and healthcare activities or devices that increases the risk of hospital acquired infections. Hospitals can use this website to identify and list the most common to the rarest causative agents of hospital acquired infections. This information can hence, inform decisions that affect distribution of limited resources to prevent, manage, and treat specific hospital acquired infections. More healthcare resources will be allocated and more efforts directed to the prevention, monitoring, diagnosis, and treatment/management of the most common types of hospital acquired infections as opposed to the rarest ones. In this way, hospitals can use data analytics to achieve effective distribution of resources leading to improved prevention, monitoring, diagnosis, and treatment of hospital acquired infections.

            The healthcare-associated infections (HAI) in Connecticut acute care hospital that reported data on CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSA) shows limited progress in prevention of hospital acquired infections in 2016 compared to the previous year or national levels. The only impressive improvement was that that the standardized infection ratio (SIR) for Clostridium difficile events in 32 acute care hospitals dropped by 15% compared to 2015. However, SIR for C. difficile in the 32 hospitals was still 10% higher compared to the national averages in 2016.  Similarly, in 32 acute care hospitals there was no significant change in terms central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia in 2016 compared with 2015. The state SIR for CLABSI (in 32 hospitals) and ventilator-associated events (in 16 hospitals) remains significantly higher by 11% and 59% respectively compared to the national SIR. In addition, in 2016, there was no significant progress that had been made in prevention of MRSA bacteremia, surgical site infections, and CAUTIs compared to the previous year with respect to the state and national statistics (CDC, 2018_b). 

            No enough data was available concerning occurrence of HAI in Connecticut’s inpatient and rehabilitation facilities. It was indicated that C. difficile events were lower by 51% compared to national baseline; whereas, there was no significant change in CAUTIs SIR compared to national baseline. Similarly, there was no data concerning HAI in Connecticut’s long term acute care hospitals in 2016 (CDC, 2018_b). This is a wake-up call that the Connecticut inpatient and rehabilitation facilities as well as long term acute care hospitals need to capture and report data to the CDC’s NHSA. 

Week 6 Topic-Healthcare Information as an Asset

Patient medical history, especially from electronic health records, is one of the examples of patient information that can bring value to a healthcare organization. A patient’s medical history helps hospitals to avoid duplication/repetition of interviews, tests and diagnoses that may have been done by other healthcare facilities, thus saving on costs. Besides, value is added since information such as drug allergy and previous/current medications being taken by the patient can be used to improve the safety and quality of care as well as facilitate provision of patient-centered care. Medical history is vital for prevention of adverse drug events including overdose issues, drug allergic reactions and end-organ damage (Alpert, 2016). As such, medical history can bring value to healthcare organizations.

Protecting of sensitive data, specifically patient’s medical history, is a shared responsibility (University of Michigan, 2018). Healthcare organizations can protect patient’s medical histories through a number of strategies. The first strategy is to secure the system with access barriers such as passwords and firewalls to prevent authorized access to patient information. The second strategy is to put in an automatic system logout mechanism after a given period of inactivity to help logout access in case an authorized person forgets to logout from the electronic records systems after use. The last, but not the least strategies include conducting a continuous monitoring and improvement exercise to help improve system security, identifying emerging threats or loopholes and addressing them appropriately in time.

A healthcare organization stands at a risk if it fails to protect a patient’s medical history. One of the risks is loss of patient-hospital trust due to leaked patient information regarding their medical history, for example, mental health information and HIV/AIDs. Loss of patient’s trust may result in decreased patient inflows in the future. Patients may prefer competing healthcare organizations instead, which can assure privacy and confidentiality of their information. Another risk is that the organization may be sued for misappropriate handling and sharing of patient information to unauthorized third-parties.