A Statistical Approach to Reduce Hospital-Associated Infections

Healthcare-associated infections remain a major cause of morbidity, mortality, and cost despite concerted efforts of infection control professionals. Development of an effective means to address this problem is a priority—especially in the case of vulnerable populations such as ICU and pediatric patients. Various medical and organizational interventions have been suggested in the literature, and statistical process control techniques have also been used to monitor hospital-associated infections. However, no effort has been made to systematically understand the spread of infections. This article presents a methodology to model the transmission of infections in a pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) and to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing their incidence. The approach integrates simulation and risk analysis techniques with SPC methodologies to estimate the occurrence of hospital-associated infections and to evaluate ICU characteristics in order to pinpoint a set of interventions most effective in tackling hospital-associated infections.