William B. Crede

Linking hospital epidemiology and quality assurance: seasoned concepts in a new role.

In this initial presentation, certain concepts central to infection control epidemiology have been discussed and related to the evaluation of noninfectious events in medical care. While most of the examples have focused on parallels in noninfectious hazards of hospital care, a more global evaluation of the functional benefit(s) and cost-effectiveness of medical care intervention using similar epidemiologic principles is possible and of equal value. These issues will be discussed in future presentations. It will be our continuing thesis that the current infection control practitioner and hospital epidemiologist will need to become more involved in the quality assurance and risk management activities of their institutions and that training in all fields of medical care evaluation will need to be founded in epidemiology. Programs in quality assurance and risk management must adopt the use of these standard methods and must generate the databases to allow variations from norms in clinical practice to be evaluated. Those in infection control will need to broaden their expertise to include more sophisticated statistical methods, newer strategies in the observational studies of clinical care, the fundamentals of clinical information systems and data handling, and the appropriate national and regional sources of comparative clinical data. Future articles in the Topics series will provide reviews in these areas and serve as a forum for issues in the changing field of hospital epidemiology. The editors welcome comments on the series or manuscripts for review for possible publication.

Surveillance for Quality Assessment I. Surveillance in Infection Control Success Reviewed

This review of the use of surveillance by infection control practitioners (ICPs) in nosocomial infection control programs has identified key components that have led to and supported its continued application and success. These include: Surveillance targeting of events (diseases); Early development of standardized definitions; Wide acceptance of these criteria; Advocacy, leadership and education of methodology and; A high level of effectiveness in program practice.

Mortality rates as a quality indicator: a simple answer to a complex question.

Clinical, administrative, and information issues have been reviewed that may impact on the sensitivity of mortality rates as a quality indicator. It is clear that current technology cannot necessarily identify high-risk institutions through the use of abstracted discharge data. Furthermore, even if this screening capability is improved, verification of quality problems still requires detailed chart review. Quality of health care delivery will continue to be scrutinized by various groups, only some familiar with clinical risk adjustment and the actual process of care. In order to promote the accuracy and fairness of the review process, objective, outcome-based criteria for high-quality care must be developed for many clinical situations, and clinicians must continue to be involved in quality assessment.

Analytic Strategies in Hospital Epidemiology: Cross-Sectional Studies

Prevalence studies have long been a cornerstone of chronic disease epidemiology and infectious hospital epidemiology. However, application of cross-sectional techniques to non-infectious areas of hospital epidemiology has been limited to large scale period prevalence studies of mortality. The architecture of cross-sectional studies was reviewed in detail, highlighting the descriptive power of such studies and acknowledging problems in proving causation as opposed to association. An application of cross-sectional methodology in evaluating blood product use, which takes advantage of the descriptive strengths of the method and availability of information concerning indications for blood use, was outlined. The cross-sectional method should be as useful a tool in evaluating non-communicable disease quality of care as it has been in infectious disease-related hospital epidemiology.

Along the Data-Information Continuum: Pitfalls and Opportunities

Opportunities and problems in hospital information have been reviewed. At this juncture, it is clear that problems exist in much of the data that administrators and regulators accept as valid. This is due in part to the lack of attention to clinical information systems compared with financial and other management systems. At individual institutions, opportunities exist not only to upgrade the quality of data collected, but also to enhance the integration of these data to provide better clinical information. If this process can occur in an environment of cooperation between larger teaching institutions, larger clinically sophisticated databases can be constructed to better evaluate medical practice and clinical care.