What are Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI)?

Healthcare-associated infection (HAI) refers to infections that occur as a result of contact with the healthcare system in its widest sense - from care provided in your own home, to general practice, nursing home care and care in acute hospitals. The term has recently been coined in recognition that increasingly complex procedures are undertaken outside hospitals. Previously, when most complex healthcare was hospital based, the term hospital-acquired infection was used.

What does the term hospital-acquired infection mean?

Hospital-acquired infection (also known as nosocomial infection) has a strict definition. It refers to an infection that usually develops in a patient 48 hours or more after admission to a hospital or following insertion of an indwelling device, such as a urinary catheter. Infections that occur within the first 48 hours are often considered to have been picked up in the community and were incubating prior to admission. These are then referred to as community-acquired infections. The 48 hour cut-off is somewhat arbitrary as infections have variable incubation periods.

Please click the tabs below to review hospital data pertaining to hospital-acquired infections as compared to our independent Benchmarking Group. All data are from the calendar year 2012.

*Piedmont Healthcare is required to protect the anonymity of its benchmarking affiliation and cannot release the name of that network. The benchmarking collaborative was established in 1997 and now includes over 40 community hospitals in five southeastern states. There are five physician epidemiologists and five full-time Infection Control Professionals (ICPs) associated with the network who work with over 50 ICPs in the member hospitals. The goals of this voluntary collaborative are to collect data from community hospitals and to use these data in working with the infection control departments at the member community hospitals to better understand local problems and patterns related to healthcare-associated infections as a means of improving the performance and quality of care delivered to patients. Piedmont Healthcare has been a member of this network since 2002.