The Minimum Data Set and Quality Indicators for National Healthcare-Associated Infection Surveillance in Mainland China: Towards Precision Management.

Hongwu Yao,Yubin Xing,Bowei Liu,Jijiang Suo,Mingmei Du,Yunxi Liu,Lu Li,Chunping Chen,Qiang Fu,Yanling Bai,Jian Lin,Rui Huo

doi:10.1155/2019/2936264

Abstract

The magnitude and scope of the healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) burden are underestimated worldwide, and have raised public concerns for their adverse effect on patient safety. In China, HCAIs still present an unneglected challenge and economic burden in recent decades. With the purpose of reducing the HCAI prevalence and enhancing precision management, China's National Nosocomial Infection Management and Quality Control Center (NNIMQCC) had developed a Minimum Data Set (MDS) and corresponding Quality Indicators (QIs) for establishing national HCAI surveillance system, the data elements of which were repeatedly discussed, investigated, and confirmed by consensus of the expert team. The total number of data elements in MDS and QIs were 70 and 64, and they were both classified into seven categorical items. The NNIMQCC also had started two pilot projects to inspect the applicability, feasibility, and reliability of MDS. After years of hard work, more than 400 health facilities in 14 provinces have realized the importance of HCAI surveillance and contributed to developing an ability of exporting automatically standardized data to meet the requirement of MDS and participate in the regional surveillance system. Generally, the emergence of MDS and QIs in China indicates the beginning of the national HCAI surveillance based on information technology and computerized process data. The establishment of MDS aimed to use electronic health process data to ensure the data accuracy and comparability and to provide instructive and ongoing QIs to estimate and monitor the burden of HCAIs, and to evaluate the effects of interventions and direct health policy decision-making.

Highlights

Healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs), known as nosocomial infections, have become an increasingly serious public health issue worldwide because of the effect on morbidity and mortality among hospitalized patients, especially in developing or resource-poor countries [1,2,3,4]
The Danish had established validate computer-assisted surveillance of HCAI based on selected laboratory and administrative data, which aimed at securing a follow-up on the outcome of the interventions directed at HCAIs [13]
This study examines the identification and use of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) and Quality Indicators (QIs) for national HCAI surveillance in mainland China, to help to address the national HCAI surveillance challenge and emphasize the importance of MDS and QIs in effective data utilization and quality management

Summary

Introduction

Healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs), known as nosocomial infections, have become an increasingly serious public health issue worldwide because of the effect on morbidity and mortality among hospitalized patients, especially in developing or resource-poor countries [1,2,3,4]. HCAI surveillance system has been proven to be a powerful tool for estimating and monitoring the national/regional prevalence of infections and evaluating the effect of interventions, and many countries had established national HCAI surveillance systems [3, 6,7,8,9,10,11], which mainly aimed to develop a Minimum Data Set (MDS) to collect standardized and uniform data about HCAIs from participating healthcare facilities to support data comparison, to release a Quality Indicators (QIs) for use in benchmarking, public reporting, and pay-for-performance programmes. The US had established a National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance (NNIS) in 1974 using a unified data collection and calculation method and aimed to compare the HCAI rates among different participating. The TREAT system allows for combination of data from different datasets and is robust to missing data

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Conclusion