France steps up efforts to disclose hospital-acquired infections, other performance data

Half of the world's hospital-acquired infections occur in the ICU. Creative Commons image: brymantra

A change in French law will oblige French hospitals to make statistics on the quality of their health care available to the public.

Beginning January 2010, patients in France will be able to consult comparable performance data on hospitals when choosing where to receive care. Hospitals will be required to disclose the prevalence of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), blood exposure incidents, and urinary and pulmonary infections. The data, to be updated annually, will initially comprise about 10 criteria, with others to be added later.

The changes were announced yesterday by French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot during a press conference. Bachelot also announced significant progress in the fight against nosocomial infections –- those infections resulting from treatment in a healthcare facility and which are secondary a patient's original condition.

A limited number of comparative statistics have been available for 5 years, but their existence was not publicized and they could be found only on obscure and technical government web sites not easily navigated by the general public.

Figures from 2008 will also be made more widely available. They are said to show across-the-board progress in areas such as nosocomial infections, the use of hydro-alcohol based products, the appropriate use of antibiotics (previously a serious problem in France) and the detection and surveillance of infections contracted during surgery.

Other criteria will include the prevalence of staphylococcus infection due to resistance to meticillin-based antibiotics, blood exposure incidents, and urinary and pulmonary infections.

Patients will also be able to evaluate hospitals according to the quality of their administrative processes including medical files and related documents, the timely and correct diagnosis and follow up of nutritional problems as well as the time it takes for letters and other documents to be sent and received by patients. Additional criteria are currently being considered for future inclusion in the list.

French authorities have long been viewed as being resistant to issuing   figures and statistics on issues subject to government action or regulation.

The quantity of information available to the public on the quality of education, prisons, the social security system and other areas is considered limited in comparison to some other European countries and the United States.

The health authorities have not yet determined all of the methods that may be used for getting the hospital performance data before the public but stressed that putting the data up on complicated government web sites will not be enough in the future.