CORHA HAI-AR Outbreak Investigation and Response Tracking System

What is this?

The following materials were developed to help health departments and large healthcare systems manage information related to investigations of possible HAI-AR outbreaks involving healthcare delivery. The materials include a sample database (provided in the form of a downloadable Microsoft Access file) and data dictionary. The database is intended to be used for tracking summary data for responses activities. It is not intended to capture individual case data as would be done with a line list or a database developed for a specific epidemiologic investigation.

Why use these materials?

Maintaining an electronic database of HAI-AR investigations allows a health department or healthcare system to review and summarize information to facilitate information sharing and identify strengths and gaps in reporting and investigative capacity. For health departments where HAI outbreaks are recorded in a general outbreak database including other types of outbreaks, it is important that outbreaks occurring in healthcare settings or due to healthcare exposures can be queried and extracted separately. These materials can be used to help improve current HAI-AR response activity tracking efforts or to provide a starting place for adoption of a new database dedicated to HAI-AR response activity tracking.

What types of HAI-AR Response events should be captured?

Consider recording all HAI-AR response activities in your tracking system. Response refers to efforts to assist with the assessment and investigation of specific, acute HAI-AR risks, which may take the form of (1) outbreaks, (2) clusters of infections, (3) sentinel cases (e.g., HAI or emerging AR threat of public health interest), or (4) a serious breach in infection control practice.

Downloads:

CORHA HAI-AR Tracking System Data Dictionary (Word File)

CORHA HAI-AR Tracking System (Zipped Access File)

Source: CORHA Investigation and Control Workgroup
Date Posted: October 2017