Hospital Acquired Condition Reduction Strategies with Big Data Analytics

Hospital acquired conditions or HACs emerge as a great challenge for healthcare systems and clinicians as it is one of the major causes for mortality and penalties since such situations occur during a patient’s stay in the hospital. The main causes behind the occurrence of such infections may include – poor maintenance of healthcare facilities or inappropriate treatment procedures adopted by the staff.

Being a prominent safety concern for patients and healthcare providers, such conditions create a distinctive urge for the deployment of hospital acquired infection prevention measures. 

Who is at High Risk?

Prior to making any significant changes toward hospital acquired infection prevention measures, information about high-risk individuals needs to be reviewed. The major important factors behind the development of such infections include –

• Patients within the age-group of 65 and above
• Patients who consume antibiotics 
• Shock treatment or any major trauma
• Acute renal failures may also result in such conditions

Hospital Acquired Infection Reduction Program

The increasing rate of mortality, morbidity and lengthy stay of patients has resulted in the introduction of hospital acquired infection reduction program by CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services). According to this program, CMS is liable to penalize the healthcare organizations and hospitals that have higher patient complication rates in comparison to their peers. The qualifying hospitals will require paying one percent of every Medicare payment they receive.

Hospital Big Data – A Preventive Measure

As per the study of CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the hospital acquired conditions are directly becoming a major cause for more than 15000 deaths every year. However, providers are striving hard to seek better methods for managing such conditions by gathering reliable data concerning these problems.Of course, hospital big data can greatly help in the prevention of such infections. In fact, some of the suggested measures for its control according to CDC include –

• Ensuring appropriate hand hygiene
• Making use of equipment for personal protection (PPE)
• Establish proper cough etiquette and respiratory hygiene
• Making sure complete injection site safety 
• Effective handling and storing of medication
• Disinfecting and cleaning the surgery instruments as well as devices
• Improvising the techniques of sterilization.

Reducing the Penalties

Having the right clinical analytical software such as Jvion’s RevEgis can help improve the HAC scores of a hospital. Here are some of the important tips for healthcare organizations to reduce penalties under the HAI reduction program of CMC –

• Remain proactive in evaluating, measuring and optimizing the processes as well as outcomes of critical care. 
• Putting in place the right processes of coding in order to capture accurate present on admission (POA) data of patient. 
• Implement active systems of surveillance for identification of HACs and any potential harm to patients. 

Summary: You can ensure absolute prevention from hospital acquired condition with the help of big data analytics. It combines and analyzes the patient history to predict the probability for the occurrence of such infections.