National Healthcare Agreement: PI 39-Healthcare-associated Staphylococcus aureus (including MRSA) bacteraemia in acute care hospitals, 2012 QS
Data Quality Statement Attributes
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 500205 |
Registration status: | Health, Superseded 14/01/2015 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: |
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Institutional environment: | The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) calculated the indicator from data provided by states and territories. The AIHW is an independent statutory authority within the Health and Ageing portfolio, which is accountable to the Parliament of Australia through the Minister. For further information see the AIHW website. The data supplied by the states and territories were collected from hospitals through the healthcare associated infection surveillance programs run by the states and territories. The arrangements for the collection of data by hospitals and the reporting to State and Territory health authorities vary among the jurisdictions. |
Timeliness: | The reference period for this data is 2010‑11. |
Accessibility: | The following states and territories publish data relating to healthcare-associated SAB in various report formats on their websites: NSW South Wales: Your Health Service public website reports SAB by individual hospital: http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/hospitals/search.asp New South Wales: Healthcare associated infections reporting for 8 infection indicators by state. http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/quality/hai/index.asp Tasmania: Acute public hospitals healthcare associated infection surveillance report. Western Australia: Healthcare Associated Infection Unit - Annual Report http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/3/455/3/reports__healthcare_associated_infection_unit.pm South Australia: Health Care Associated Bloodstream infection report http://www.health.sa.gov.au/INFECTIONCONTROL/Default.aspx?PageContentID=18&tabid=147 Victoria: VICNISS hospital-acquired infection surveillance annual report |
Interpretability: | Jurisdictional manuals should be referred to for full details of the definitions used in healthcare-associated infection surveillance. Definitions for this indicator are published in the performance indicator specifications. |
Relevance: | This indicator is for patient episodes of SAB acquired, diagnosed and treated in public acute care hospitals. The definition of a public acute care hospital is ‘all public hospitals including those hospitals defined as public psychiatric hospitals in the Public Hospital Establishments NMDS’. While the indicator is intended to describe SAB rates in ‘acute’ care public hospitals, the provision of ‘acute’ services varies among jurisdictions, so it is not possible to exclude ‘non-acute’ hospitals from the indicator in a way that would be uniform among the states and territories. Therefore all public hospitals have been included in the scope of the indicator so that the same approach is taken for each State and Territory. The SAB patient episodes reported were associated with both admitted patient care and with non-admitted patient care (including emergency departments and outpatient clinics). No denominator is available to describe the total admitted and non-admitted patient activity of public hospitals. However, the number of patient days for admitted patient activity is used as the denominator to take into account the large differences between the sizes of the public hospital sectors among the jurisdictions. The accuracy and comparability of the SAB rates among jurisdictions and over time is limited because the count of patient days reflects the amount of admitted patient activity, but does not reflect the amount of non-admitted patient activity. The amount of hospital activity that patient days reflect varies among jurisdictions and over time because of variation in admission practices. Only patient episodes associated with public acute care hospitals in each jurisdiction are counted. If a case is associated with care provided in another jurisdiction then it may be reported (where known) by the jurisdiction where the care associated with the SAB occurred. Almost all patient episodes of SAB will be diagnosed when the patient is an admitted patient. However, the intention is that patient episodes are reported whether they were determined to be associated with admitted patient care or non-admitted patient care in public acute care hospitals. The data presented have not been adjusted for any differences in case-mix between the states and territories. Analysis by State and Territory is based on the location of the hospital. |
Accuracy: | For some states and territories there is less than 100 per cent coverage of public hospitals. For those jurisdictions with incomplete coverage of public hospitals (in the numerator), only patient days for those hospitals (or parts of hospitals) that were covered by the SAB surveillance arrangements are included (in the denominator). Differences in the types of hospitals not included may impact on the accuracy and comparability of rates. Rates should be interpreted in conjunction with information about SAB surveillance coverage. Data for Queensland include only patients aged 14 years and over. Sometimes it is difficult to determine if a case of SAB is associated with care provided by a particular hospital. Counts therefore may not be precise where cases are incorrectly included or excluded. However, it is likely that the number of cases incorrectly included or excluded would be small. It is possible that there will be less risk of SAB in hospitals not included in the SAB surveillance arrangements, especially if such hospitals undertake fewer invasive procedures than those hospitals which are included. There may be imprecise exclusion of private hospital and non-hospital patient episodes due to the inherent difficulties in determining the origins of SAB episodes. For 2010‑11, all states and territories used the definition of SAB patient episodes associated with acute care public hospitals as defined above. The patient day data may be preliminary for some hospitals/jurisdictions. |
Coherence: | National data for this indicator were first presented in the 2010 COAG Reform Council report. Since that report further work has been undertaken on data development for this indicator, including the definition of an episode of SAB and a suitable denominator, as well as the coverage of public hospitals. As 2008‑09 data were provided prior to the development of agreed national definitions, by only five jurisdictions, and was limited to principal referral and large hospitals, these data are not comparable with those reported subsequently. Tasmania has advised that their SAB data are comparable across the three reporting years (2008‑09, 2009‑10, 2010‑11). For the data presented in the 2011 COAG Reform Council report, New South Wales used a definition of SAB that differed from the national definition. The definition of SAB used by New South Wales for the 2012 report conforms to the national definition. Thus 2009‑10 and 2010‑11 data for New South Wales are not comparable. The Northern Territory data for 2009‑10 is not comparable with the Northern Territory data for 2010‑11 data as the collection method and verification process has changed. Some jurisdictions have previously published related data (see Accessibility above). |
Relational attributes | |
Related metadata references: | Supersedes National Healthcare Agreement: PI 39: Healthcare-associated Staphylococcus aureus (including MRSA) bacteraemia in acute care hospitals, 2011 QS Health, Superseded 04/12/2012 Has been superseded by National Healthcare Agreement: PI 22-Healthcare associated infections, 2013 QS Health, Superseded 14/01/2015 |
Indicators linked to this Data Quality statement: |