Central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) rates are important markers for patient safety and the focus of increasing public health, payer, regulatory, and public interest. This CLABSI data release is the third by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), and the second using information submitted by California hospitals to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). This release presents 2011 California average and hospital-specific CLABSI rates grouped by patient care locations where patients with similar medical conditions receive similar levels of care. New in this release, we calculate the percentage changes in average rates for patient care locations from 2010 (April through December 2010) to 2011 (January through December). Monitoring and reporting California CLABSI rates by patient care locations provide important information to assess CLABSI rates within and between hospitals. These rates also provide information for targeting CLABSI prevention resources in California. Definitions, including CDPH patient care locations, methods, and limitations associated with this release are summarized in Technical Notes (see link below).
CLABSI rates can be affected by clinical and infection control practices related to central line insertion and maintenance practices, patient-based risk factors, and the surveillance methods used by reporting hospitals. To ensure appropriate interpretation, readers are encouraged to consider the overall context of these rates. A low CLABSI rate may reflect greater diligence with infection prevention or may reflect less effective surveillance methods that detect fewer infections, including failure to appropriately apply standardized surveillance definitions and protocols. Similarly, a high rate may reflect lapses in infection prevention practices or more aggressive infection surveillance including more consistent application of standardized surveillance definitions and protocols.
What’s in Key Findings? This document summarizes the key findings from this data release including introduction, important results, and key public health actions and messages.
What’s in Table A? This table presents average CLABSI rates by patient care location for two time periods: April-December 2010 and January-December 2011 and presents the percentage change over the time periods for patient care locations with at least 10 reporting hospitals.
What’s in Table 1? This table lists the statewide average CLABSI rates for each patient care location. The distributions of hospital-specific CLABSI rates are presented by key percentiles for patient care locations with at least 10 reporting hospitals. California average CLABSI rates are the peer-based standards against which individual hospital CLABSI rates are compared and key percentiles provide information on the variability of CLABSI rates reported by hospitals.
What's in Table 2? Similar to consumer product evaluations, this table provides a visual summary of all hospitals in one "snap-shot" table. It lists California hospitals (alphabetically), patient care locations, and symbols identifying those hospital-specific locations where CLABSI rates were statistically higher, lower, or no different than state average rates.
To view detailed, hospital-specific CLABSI information for each of the patient care locations, see either Table 1 or Table 2 and click on the link for each patient care location. Detailed information for each patient care location includes an alphabetical list of California hospitals, numbers of CLABSI, central line-days, and patient days, CLABSI rates and their 95% confidence intervals, and symbols indicating patient care locations that were statistically higher, lower, or no different from statewide average CLABSI rates.
What's in Technical Notes? The Technical Notes contain information on the data sources, definitions, risk adjustment methods using CDPH patient care locations, quality assurance and control, statistical methods, and limitations associated with this data release.