Making the case for infusion therapy standards and intravenous teams in the era of national health care reform: Craven & Ober Policy Strategists, LLC.

摘要

The incidence of the use of infusion therapy during a hospitalization makes IV care a nearly universal patient experience in a hospital setting. In ambulatory and other health care settings, the use of IVs is also frequent. It has been common practice for some time to institute hospital-wide surveillance programs to track nosocomial bloodstream infections (BSIs) and to use these data to institute policies and procedures to decrease the incidence of such untoward outcomes. Primary nosocomial BSIs are associated with excess mortality rates and hospital costs. Early studies indicated that BSIs were felt to increase length of stay by 7.4 days and increase charges . by Dollars 3517 per episode.1 Since studies like this in the late 1990s to more recent analyses, researchers have tried to study best practices in relation to the prevention of infections and controlling costs. One such article by Eggimann et al2 studied the impact of a multipronged strategy to decrease BSIs. During a 2-year study, the surveillance of nosocomial infections was done by 2 infection-control nurses.