Which hospitals have the most infections? We can finally check it ourselves. The website disclosing institutional nosocomial infections and epidemics was launched on Thursday evening and is now accessible from the website of the National Centre for Public Health and Pharmacy (NNGYK), the body said. It added that the data reporting system simultaneously served transparency, professional feedback, institutional self-assessment and the further strengthening of patient safety.
Hospital infection data public: Goal is to strengthen trust
The statement said that authentic and understandable information could also contribute to strengthening trust in healthcare provision.
The new, user-friendly interactive data reporting interface allows the public, patients, healthcare workers, hospital hygiene experts and other professionals, as well as the press, to access institutional data and its temporal trends. Easy navigation is supported by public explanations, graphs and professional indicators that help interpret the data correctly, NNGYK said.
Disclosure of the data was prepared in several steps. NNGYK presented the basis of the methodology to the press at a professional background discussion, then consulted with representatives of professional, chamber, patient and civil organisations. Just before the public launch, hospital directors, county chief medical officers and patient rights representatives could also get to know the dashboard’s operation, the institutional data used, and methods of interpretation.
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“Transparency does not only mean accessibility of data”
“The goal of the gradual preparation was to ensure that the data made public can be interpreted within the appropriate professional context rather than in isolation,” NNGYK said. “Transparency does not merely mean accessibility of data: it is at least as important that they become public in an understandable way, with an appropriate methodological background and with information that prevents misinterpretation,” they wrote.
The disclosure is implemented in several phases, with nosocomial epidemics reported by institutions providing active inpatient care, infections caused by Clostridioides difficile, and healthcare-associated infections appearing first. The system will later be expanded to show additional patient safety indicators, including data on infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens and bloodstream infections.
“Few countries make institutional data on nosocomial infections publicly available in such detail. In terms of the professional methodology of public data disclosure at the institutional level, its detail and the content supporting the interpretation of the data, Hungary is joining the international forefront,” the statement said.
The data reporting system is available at nngyk.gov.hu.
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Featured image: illustration. Photo: depositphotos.com
