The Case for “Reasonably Preventing” Healthcare-Associated Infections

There have been many studies demonstrating the costs – both in terms of patient suffering and associated interventions – of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). The most famous of these was the 1999 Institute of Medicine’s “To Err is Human, ” an astounding report describing the evidence of HAIs as a component of patient safety errors. Since that time, numerous evidence-based guidelines by the CDC, APIC, SHEA and AHRQ among others have attempted to provide strategies to prevent infections in the most common HAI’s: catheter-associated bloodstream infections (CA-BSIs), ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CA-UTIs), and surgical site infections (SSIs).