Our Goal

 

Our goal is to assess the impact of Medicare’s policy of adjusting payment for healthcare-associated infections (HAI) on health outcomes and costs in U.S. hospitals.

 

Aim 1

To evaluate the impact of the CMS policy on HAI "billing" rates reported by Medicare

   

Aim 2

To evaluate the impact of the CMS policy on "true infection" rates reported through the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN)  

 

Aim 3

To explore whether the CMS policy reduces both billing and true infection rates in hospitals

 

Aim 4

To assess whether reduced reimbursement for HAIs as a result of the CMS policy disproportionately affects hospitals that  care for a high proportion of poor and minority patients

 

Who We Are

The PAICAP (Preventing Avoidable Infectious Complications by Adjusting Payment) project is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and is being conducted by researchers at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health.  

Our collaborators include leadership at:

Your Involvement

We are asking hospitals that participate in NHSN to join our research study.  This study will allow us to understand the impact of Medicare’s policy on hospital costs and outcomes, so that we can help future decision-making by policymakers.

This study will take 15-20 minutes of your time, and we will share our findings with you on a regular basis. 

The study involves sharing data that you already contribute to NHSN with our project’s NHSN Group called PAICAP.  We do not need any patient identifiers for this study.  No new data collection is required.  Your time commitment would be limited to 15-20 minutes in total to join the PAICAP NHSN group and to select the types of infection and denominator data you are willing share with us.  Throughout this 4-year project, we will provide all participants with annual updates of our findings.

We are committed to protecting confidentiality.      

We are taking multiple steps to protect your data.  Hospitals that join our group will NOT be able to see data from other hospitals in the PAICAP group. Your hospital data will only be visible to NHSN PAICAP group administrators.  We will only present data in aggregate and your hospital will NOT be identified in any presentations or publications.  You will have the opportunity to choose which data you want to share with us, and we will not accept any patient identifiers.  PAICAP NHSN group administrators will only access the data in the NHSN group at pre-defined times after alerting PAICAP members.   We will utilize the Group feature of NHSN for accessing only those data you choose to share with us in order to create a study database.  After generating an analytic dataset, all hospital identifiers will be removed and hospitals will be assigned a random, unique study ID.  A cross-walk between study IDs and hospital identifiers will be stored separately from the analytic dataset in a secure, password protected location and will only be accessible by authorized PAICAP study staff.  The record linking the study ID number to your hospital will be destroyed once the study is complete.  Additionally, risks to confidentiality will be minimized by the use of password-protected computers and databases secured behind multiple firewalls.  Databases will be accessible only to approved project staff and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute Institutional Review Board.  We are committed to protecting the confidentiality of hospitals participating in this study.  Information which would permit identification of any hospital will not be disclosed or released to any outside entity without the prior consent of the institution, unless required by law. 

For more information about how we will protect your data you may view our Frequently Asked Questions document (click here).

 

How to Contact Us

If you are interested in joining or even just learning more about our project, there are many ways you can reach us.  You may:

Once you have expressed your interest, we will follow up with a few questions to determine your eligibility and provide you with:

We are happy to answer all of your questions and provide you with additional information so that you feel comfortable participating in this important research.  

To participate in the study please complete the form below.  

You may also complete the form to request additional information about the PAICAP project.

 

Name:   

Hospital Name*:   
* if you are affiliated with more than 1 hospital please submit the contact information for your main location 

Hospital Street Address:       

City:       State:       Zip:

Email address:                

Confirm email address: 

Telephone number:        

Preferred method of contact:   Email    Phone

Is your hospital a NHSN facility?    Yes      No

Are you:    NHSN facility administrator       NHSN user         Neither

If you are affiliated with more than 1 hospital, please list the additional hospitals and indicate if they are NHSN facilities:

                                    

What is the best time of day to reach you?   

Comments/Questions   


            

Our Team

Principal Investigator

Grace M. Lee, MD, MPH

Harvard Medical School & Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute

   Co-Investigators

Ashish Jha, MD, MPH

Harvard School of Public Health

Ken Kleinman, ScD

Harvard Medical School & Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute

 Richard Platt, MD, MPH

Harvard Medical School & Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute

Stephen Soumerai, ScD

Harvard Medical School & Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute

 

 

Policy Advisory Board Members

Neil Fishman, MD

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America

Scott Fridkin, MD, MPH

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Donald Goldmann, MD

Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Harvard Medical School & Harvard School of Public Health

Denise Graham

Association of Infection Control Professionals and Epidemiologists, Inc.

John Jernigan, MD

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

William Kassler, MD, MPH

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

 

 

Infection Prevention Advisory Board Members

Victoria Fraser, MD

Washington University School of Medicine

John Jernigan, MD

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Teresa Horan, MPH

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Susan Huang, MD, MPH

University of California Irvine Medical Center

Jeanmarie Mayer, MD

University of Utah School of Medicine

Kurt Stevenson, MD, MPH

Ohio State University Medical Center

Robert Weinstein, MD

John Stroger Hospital of Cook County & Rush Medical College

Deborah Yokoe, MD

Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute & Harvard Medical School