Appendix B. National Healthcare Agreement performance indicator: Healthcare-associated infections
The National Healthcare Agreement performance indicator is calculated using:
- the number of SAB patient episodes associated with public hospitals for both hospitals focussing on acute care and hospitals focussing on non-acute or sub-acute care such as psychiatric, rehabilitation and palliative care
- the number of days of patient care for the public hospitals included in the SAB surveillance arrangements.
The performance indicator includes data on:
- counts of SAB cases, with data presented separately for MRSA and MSSA SAB cases
- the rate of cases of SAB per 10,000 days of patient care for public hospitals included in the SAB surveillance arrangements.
Data are restricted to cases associated with care provided in public hospitals. Cases that are associated with care provided by private hospitals and with non-hospital care are excluded (even if the patients are subsequently treated for the SAB in a public hospital).
In 2016, the specification of this performance indicator was amended to exclude unqualified days (for example, when acute care was not required) for newborns from the count of days of patient care included in the SAB surveillance arrangements, which had previously been included.
More information is available from the current specification for this performance indicator, available at National Healthcare Agreement: PI 22–Healthcare associated infections: Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia, 2018.