[Hospital-level Medical Institution Infection Control Status Survey Operation System]

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency established and implemented a standardized survey system to prepare basic data for formulating and evaluating policies to prevent healthcare-associated infections, that identified the status of infection control based on the results of statistical analysis. We developed a survey standardizing questionnaire to gather information on the prevention and control of infection in healthcare facilities and an online survey system. A field survey system was utilized to verify the reliability of the survey. The online survey was conducted by respondents filling out the questionnaire themselves (computer-assisted self interviewing). Thereafter, some of the respondents from the online survey were randomly selected for a field survey where professional investigators visited the hospitals, and the limitations of the online survey were complemented. In the first survey on acute-care hospital infection control survey in 2021, 1,197 out of 1,767 hospitals (67.7%) participated in the online survey, and the field survey was conducted in 125 hospitals. In the survey on long-term care hospital infection control survey in 2022, 1,270 out of 1,365 hospitals (93.0%) participated in the online survey, and the field survey was conducted in 140 hospitals. The concordance (Gwet's AC1) between online survey responses and field survey results ranged from 0.52 to 0.92. The survey system was established initially to identify the status of infection control in healthcare facilities after the revision of the Infectious Disease Prevention Act made it mandatory to investigate infection control. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency will establish and regularize this survey as a national survey system by improving on the limitations found in the first hospital-level healthcare institution survey.