Device Utilization Ratios in Infection Prevention: Process or Outcome Measure?

Area of Science:

• Healthcare epidemiology
• Infection prevention and control
• Health services research

Background:

• Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) pose a significant burden on patient safety and healthcare systems.
• Current surveillance primarily focuses on infection rates, potentially missing other aspects of care quality related to device use.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the role of device utilization in surveillance for healthcare-associated infections.
• To evaluate the potential of device utilization as a metric for healthcare quality assessment.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing literature and surveillance practices concerning medical device use.
• Analysis of device utilization as a process and outcome measure in infection prevention.

Main Results:

• Device utilization is a valuable process measure for preventing device-associated infections.
• It can also function as an outcome measure, resource-efficiently evaluating infection prevention programs when combined with risk-adjusted infection rates.
• Device utilization ratios offer insights into non-infectious harms not captured by infection-based metrics.

Conclusions:

• Device utilization is a dual-purpose metric for both infection prevention and healthcare quality evaluation.
• Standardized, risk-adjusted device utilization measurements require further study and validation for optimal implementation.