A Story of Progress: Healthcare-associated infection prevention in the United States

CDC Publishes Summary of HAI Prevention Progress in U.S. from 2006-2016

To help each state better understand its progress in healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevention and identify areas that need assistance, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes HAI Progress Reports. Improvement of healthcare quality and the reduction of HAIs in U.S. hospitals has been significant and as a result, healthcare in the U.S. is safer now than even 10 years ago. Building upon this success and continuing towards the elimination of HAIs is critical.

The year 2015 marked the start of the new five-year (2015-2020) goals of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Action Plan to Prevent Health Care-Associated Infections: Road Map to Elimination and a time of important updates and improvements for the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), CDC’s HAI surveillance system. This provided an opportunity to assess prevention progress while strategizing about the best way to move forward as a country. The summary of HAI prevention progress and next steps can be found in the reports below.

• Healthcare-associated Infections in the United States, 2006-2016: A Story of Progress - An overall summary detailing the progress made from 2006-2016 on five key infections.
• The 2015 National and State Healthcare-associated Infection Data Report – Reports of individual state and national standardized infection ratios (SIRs) using the new 2015 baseline.
• National 2015 Standardized Infection Ratios (SIRs) Calculated Using Historical Baselines – An overview of HAI prevention progress in acute care and critical access hospitals from 2014-2015 using historical baselines.