Large-scale trial conducted at 53 HCA Healthcare hospitals involving 330,000 patients
NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HCA Healthcare (NYSE: HCA), a leading healthcare provider with 185
hospitals and more than 1,800 sites of care in 20 states and the United
Kingdom, today announced a study published in the current issue of The
Lancet and conducted exclusively at HCA Healthcare hospitals has
shown an infection control technique achieved a 31 percent reduction in
bloodstream infections and nearly a 40 percent reduction in
antibiotic-resistant bacteria among non-ICU patients with central line
catheters and lumbar drains.
As a result of the study, HCA Healthcare has begun implementing the
infection prevention protocol in its hospitals.
“This reflects HCA Healthcare’s commitment to be a true learning
healthcare system,” said Jonathan B. Perlin, MD, HCA Healthcare’s
president, clinical services, and chief medical officer and one of the
study’s authors. “We use the knowledge we capture from delivering care
to millions of patients a year for continuous improvement and
innovation, not only to fuel our own quality improvement efforts but
also to solve vexing societal challenges such as infection prevention.”
Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) such as methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are a serious patient safety issue and
their elimination is a top priority for the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS). On any given day, about one in 31 hospital
patients has at least one HAI, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
The study, known as the ABATE Infection (active bathing to eliminate
infection) Trial, is part of a national strategy to reduce HAIs. The
study was conducted through a longstanding collaboration among HCA
Healthcare, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, the University of
California Irvine, and Rush University. The ABATE Trial was funded by
the National Institutes of Health with contributed effort from HCA
Healthcare. ABATE was conducted at 53 HCA Healthcare hospitals during a
21-month period involving 330,000 patients. Because it was a
large-scale, pragmatic trial—a study conducted under “real world”
conditions at community hospitals—the results of ABATE are believed to
be generally applicable to hospitals across the country.
A learning health system, which uses data from approximately 31 million
annual patient encounters to help continuously improve care, HCA
Healthcare maintains the healthcare field’s largest system for analyzing
clinical data. This makes HCA Healthcare desirable for conducting
“pragmatic trials” such as ABATE because the patients are cared for in a
single system whose diversity reflects community hospitals across the
country and whose data management system facilitates large scale
analysis.
“The ABATE Infection Trial was made possible by the remarkable
infrastructure of HCA Healthcare to conduct pragmatic clinical trials to
impact patient care,” said Susan Huang, MD MPH, professor in the
division of infectious diseases at the University of California, Irvine
School of Medicine. “Here, we found that by implementing specific
antiseptic protocols, we could prevent serious infections in patients
with medical devices.”
The ABATE Infection Trial builds on the REDUCE
MRSA Trial research conducted at HCA Healthcare hospitals and
published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2013 that documented
how intensive care units in HCA Healthcare hospitals dramatically
reduced infections and antibiotic resistant bacteria. Conducted among
non-ICU patients, the ABATE Trial evaluated whether daily bathing with
the antiseptic soap chlorhexidine (CHG)—and in those patients with MRSA,
adding the nasal antibiotic mupirocin—more effectively reduced
hospital-acquired bacterial infections than bathing with ordinary soap
and water. While no significant difference between the two intervention
groups was seen within the population overall, the researchers did find
that patients with medical devices experienced a substantial benefit if
they received the CHG/mupirocin intervention. Compared to patients
outside the intervention, they experienced a 31 percent decrease in
bloodstream infections and a nearly 40 percent decrease in antibiotic
resistant organisms, specifically MRSA and vancomycin-resistant
enterococcus (VRE).
Although only 12 percent of patients in the study had central lines and
lumbar drains, because these devices can be an entry point for
infections, patients with them accounted for 37 percent of MRSA and VRE
clinical cultures and more than half of all bloodstream infections.
The antiseptic product was contributed by Sage Products and MoInlycke.
The companies providing product to the trial had no role in the design,
conduct, analysis or publication of the ABATE Infection Trial.
About HCA Healthcare
Nashville-based HCA Healthcare is one of the nation's leading providers
of healthcare services, comprising 185 hospitals and approximately 1,800
sites of care, including surgery centers, freestanding ERs, urgent care
centers, and physician clinics, in 20 states and the United Kingdom.
With its founding in 1968, HCA Healthcare created a new model for
hospital care in the United States, using combined resources to
strengthen hospitals, deliver patient-focused care and improve the
practice of medicine. HCA Healthcare has conducted a number of clinical
studies, including one that demonstrated that full-term delivery is
healthier than early elective delivery of babies and another that
identified a clinical protocol that can reduce bloodstream infections in
ICU patients by 44 percent. HCA Healthcare is a learning healthcare
system that uses its more than 31 million annual patient encounters to
advance science, improve patient care and save lives. Please click
here to connect with HCA Healthcare on social media.
All references to “Company,” “HCA” and “HCA Healthcare” as used
throughout this document refer to HCA Healthcare, Inc. and its
affiliates.
Investor Contact:
Mark Kimbrough
615-344-2688
Media Contact:
Ed Fishbough
615-344-2810