Study: Proactive approach to hospital infections could cut costly readmissions

A new study confirms the suspicion that infections contracted in hospitals correlate strongly with readmissions, prompting the authors to recommend that patients discharged with positive clinical cultures receive “additional planning resources” before heading home.

The study is published in the June edition of Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. 

Led by Jon Furuno, PhD, an associate professor of pharmacy practice at Oregon State University, the researchers suggested that taking such measures to reduce healthcare-associated (or hospital-acquired) infections (HAIs) could lead not only to lower patient morbidity and mortality but also decreased healthcare costs.

Tracking nearly 140,000 patients admitted to the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore from 2001 to 2008, the team reviewed the number of patients readmitted within one year after discharge, as well as the number of patients with positive cultures for one of three major HAIs: methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci, or Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) more than 48 hours after admission.

They identified close to 4,800 patients with positive cultures after more than 48 hours following hospital admission and found that these patients were 40 percent more likely to readmitted to the hospital within a year and 60 percent more likely to be readmitted within 30 days than patients with negative or no clinical cultures.

The study showed that the disparity was evident even after controlling for such variables as age, sex, severity of illness and duration of stay in the hospital.

The authors acknowledged several limitations in their research, including an inability to track patients who were readmitted to facilities other than the ones at which they contracted their infections. “However, these limitations result in a more conservative measurement of the association between HAIs and readmission and, thus, the true association between these variables is likely higher than was reported in this study,” they said in a statement.