Hospital Acquired Infection Reporting – N.Y. Pub. Health Law § 2819

Every general hospital must maintain a program capable of identifying and tracking hospital acquired infections for the purpose of public reporting and quality improvement.  This program must have the capacity to identify the specific infectious agents or toxins and site of each infection, the clinical department or unit within the facility where the patient first became infected, and the patient's diagnoses and any relevant specific surgical, medical or diagnostic procedure performed during the current admission.

Each hospital must regularly report to the department the hospital infection data it has collected.  Using this information, the commissioner will establish a state-wide database of all reported hospital acquired infection information for the purpose of supporting quality improvement and infection control activities in hospitals.  The database will be organized so that consumers, hospitals, healthcare professionals, purchasers and payers may compare individual hospital experience with that of other individual hospitals as well as regional and state-wide averages and, where available, national data.

A hospital acquired infection includes any localized or systemic patient condition that resulted from the presence of an infectious agent or agents, or its toxin or toxins as determined by clinical examination or by laboratory testing, and was not found to be present or incubating at the time of admission unless the infection was related to a previous admission.