Connecting the dots: creation of an electronic regional infection control network.

The prevalence of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) continues to increase dramatically worldwide. Successful programs to reduce infection rates of resistant organisms require regional or national compliance with strict infection control measures and feedback on implementation and reduced rates. We partnered with local infection control professionals (ICPs) and leveraged our existing electronic network to create a comprehensive city-wide network to track and uniformly respond to patients admitted with a history of MRSA or VRE. We successfully standardized and included electronic data from four out of six of the major healthcare systems within Indianapolis. We created tailored abstracts to deliver key infection control data to ICPs when a MRSA patient is admitted to a participating hospital. We created web-based data entry forms for ICPs to modify and enter new infection control data. This paper describes our design and initial implementation of a working electronic regional infection control network.