The electronic medical record as a tool for infection surveillance: Successful automation of device-days

Background: Manual collection of central venous catheter, ventilator, and indwelling urinary catheter device-days is time-consuming, often restricted to intensive care units (ICU) and prone to error. Methods: We describe the use of an electronic medical record to extract existing clinical documentation of invasive devices. This allowed automated device-days calculations for device-associated infection surveillance in an acute care setting. Results: The automated system had high sensitivity specificity, and positive and negative predictive values (>0.90) compared with chart review. The system is not restricted to ICUs and reduces surveillance efforts by a conservative estimate of over 3.5 work-weeks per year in our setting. Eighty percent of urinary catheter days and 50% of central venous catheter-days occurred outside the ICU. Conclusion: Device-days may be automatically extracted from an existing electronic medical record with a higher degree of accuracy than manual collection while saving valuable personnel resources.