Health Care Quality Assessment

Healthcare-Associated infections (HAIs) are among the top causes of unnecessary illnesses and deaths in the United States. HAIs are infections that patients get while staying in a hospital or other healthcare facility – infections that the patients did not have before being admitted. They account for approximately 1.7 million infections and almost 100,000 deaths annually, costing an estimated $28-33 billion each year.

Reducing preventable HAIs is a priority for the Department of Health and for New Jersey hospitals, which are required to submit their HAI data for public reporting in the Hospital Performance Report.

HAIs are not reported as scores or simple percentages; they are reported as a Standardized Infection Ratio (SIR),a summary measure developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to allow them to track HAIs at the national, state, local or hospital level over time.

• A lower SIR is better because it suggests that the hospital had fewer infections than the national ratio.
• A higher ratio suggests that the hospital had more infections than the national level and were therefore doing worse than the nation.

For a more detailed description of SIRs:

• Visit SIRs from the CDC or
• View the Technical Report, which also provides specifics on statistical calculations