Healthcare associated infection surveillance

Healthcare associated infection (HAI) is a patient safety and quality of healthcare issue which contributes to poor patient outcomes and additional costs to the health care system. Surveillance to determine the incidence of HAI is an important part of the strategy to minimise the occurrence of these infections.

SA Health HAI surveillance program

SA Health's Infection Control Service (ICS) coordinates the collection of surveillance data from both public and private SA hospitals for several healthcare associated infections using standard definitions.  

Methodology

Contributing hospitals provide data collected according to standard definitions (see below). Data is quality controlled and converted into rates of infection per 10,000 days of hospital care. Aggregate rates are calculated for the state and risk adjusted according to the type of hospital (size and patient acuity). Data are reported back to the local health networks on a regular basis for the purposes of quality improvement monitoring.

Surveillance definitions

Surveillance in small hospitals

Signal infection surveillance can be used in facilities where healthcare associated infections occur infrequently and therefore are unable to collect large enough data sets to achieve meaningful statistical analysis.

The SA Health HAI surveillance program does not currently collect data from these facilities. For further information regarding HAI surveillance contact your LHN Infection Prevention and Control Unit and also refer to the Australian Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of Infection in Healthcare (section 4.4). 

Surveillance reports

Contributors to the SA Health healthcare associated infection (HAI) surveillance program are provided with individual reports on a quarterly basis which compare the hospital's rates of infection benchmarked against other contributors of comparatively similar size and acuity, for the particular indicator.

Annual surveillance reports with detailed analysis of aggregated and de-identified data are produced and can be accessed in the health statistics section.

National reporting

The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) also report on national data:

The  Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society also report on national central-line associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) national data.  

Further information

For further information on the SA Health surveillance program, contact SA Health's Infection Control Service.