The importance of correctly reporting the cases of health care associated infections in the DRG system

Abstract

HAI (Health Care Associated Infections) represent the infections that a healthy or sick patient contacts during an episode of hospitalization, except for the pre-existing manifestations. These infections have become a real burden for hospitals in Romania due to the long duration of hospitalization and the high costs of treatment. A big problem of the system is the poor reporting of these cases, both because of the ignorance of the reporting rules and the possible repercussions. Through this study we want to trigger an alarm signal that there is the possibility that many such infections have been omitted, thus justifying the huge difference between the Romanian and European reports. This study was performed using data from a hospital in Romania for the period of 2016. A number of 34578 cases in continuous hospitalization (both acute and chronic) enterde the study, of which a number of 27 were reported as cases of HAI and analyzed in the present study. Of the 27 reported cases, only 10 (37%) had the infectious pathology coded, while 17 (63%) did not have any diagnostic code to detect the presence of an infection; none of the cases were coded with code Y95- Nosocomial disorder.