CDC Publishes 2016 Healthcare-Associated Infection Progress Report

Healthcare-associated Infections
Report Shows National HAI Prevention Progress in Some Areas While Improvements are Needed in Others

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published the2016 Healthcare-Associated Infection Progress Report (HAI Progress Report). This report shows year-to-year progress on the prevention of key healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) to help highlight progress as well as target areas that need improvement.

The 2016 HAI Progress Report is the first report to measure year-to-year HAI prevention progress using the 2015 baseline, or reference point. The baseline was recently updated to take into account advancements in HAI prevention and updated National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions. This more current baseline allows for a more realistic and meaningful view of progress.

The HAI Progress Report consists of national and state-by-state summaries of HAIs across four healthcare settings; acute care hospitals (ACHs), inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs), long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs) and critical access hospitals (CAHs).

Nationally, for acute care hospitals, the 2016 HAI Progress Report highlights include:

• About 11% decrease in central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) 
• About 7% decrease in catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) 
• About 2% decrease in ventilator-associated events (VAEs) 
• About 13% decrease in abdominal hysterectomy surgical site infections (SSIs) 
• About 7% decrease in colon surgery SSIs 
• About 7% decrease in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)bacteremia 
• About 8% decrease in Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) infections

Additionally, the 2016 HAI Progress Report is the first progress report to be published in CDC’s AR Patient Safety Atlas. This is a departure from previous progress reports where the data was displayed in PDF format. Moving forward, CDC will publish progress report data in the AR Patient Safety Atlas in an effort to make the data easier to view and more accessible.

For more information on the 2016 HAI Progress Report methods and technical tables, visit:https://www.cdc.gov/hai/data/portal/progress-report.html 

FAQs can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/hai/data/portal/FAQs-progress-report.html