A national project called the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) significantly helped reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections in hospitals, according to a study published in the June 2 New England Journal of Medicine. The CUSP initiative, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, is a customizable safety program in which clinicians use a checklist of clinical best practices and combine it with improvement in safety culture, teamwork and communications.
In 926 hospitals studied, use of CUSP decreased rates of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) by 32 percent in non-intensive care unit settings. Each year, roughly 250,000 CAUTIs occur in hospitals, costing roughly $250 million and increasing susceptibility to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, among other negative outcomes. In addition to reducing CAUTIs, CUSP participants’ overall non-ICU use of catheters decreased from 20.1 percent to 18.8 percent by avoiding unnecessary or unnecessarily prolonged catheterizations. The study did show, however, that CAUTI and overall catheterizations did not change in ICU settings at hospitals utilizing the CUSP method.
The authors of the report suggest that the differences in routine care processes between ICUs and other hospital units could be a reason why CAUTIs did not decrease in ICUs. The project was conducted under a contract from AHRQ to the Health Research & Educational Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association.
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