The Premier healthcare alliance, headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., will collaborate with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a joint research initiative to test new technologies for predicting incidents of central-line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), as well as to automate their reporting to the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network.
The initiative will analyze the specific traits of positive blood cultures across a subset of Premier’s more than 2,300 member hospitals to develop an automated electronic surveillance tool that could be used to accurately predict the presence of CLABSIs. The Chicago Prevention Epicenter at Stoger (Cook County) Hospital in Chicago will evaluate the tool in a real-world setting.
If successful, the CDC anticipates the tool could replace traditional surveillance methods for detecting CLABSIs, which are often dependent on time-consuming manual collection of clinical data and force resources to be spent on monitoring infection rates rather than preventing them.
According to the CDC, CLABIs affect approximately 250,000 patients in the U.S. each year, with additional costs ranging from $5,734 to $22,939 per patient.
