Limiting the spread of highly resistant hospital-acquired microorganisms via critical care transfers: a simulation study.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Hospital-acquired infections with highly resistant organisms are an important problem among critically ill patients. Control of these organisms has largely focused within individual hospitals. We examine the extent to which transfers of critically ill patients could be a vector for the wide spread of highly resistant organisms, and compare the efficiency of different approaches to targeting infection control resources.

Methods

We analyzed the network of interhospital transfers of intensive care unit patients in 2005 US Medicare data and 2004-2006 Pennsylvania all-payer data. We simulated the spread of highly resistant hospital-acquired infections by randomly choosing a single hospital to develop a highly resistant organism and following the spread of infection or col

SUBMITTER: Karkada UH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3362134 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature