Documentation of acute change in mental status in nursing homes highlights opportunity to augment infection surveillance criteria

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2020-04-28

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Penna, Austin R., Christina L. Sancken, Nimalie D. Stone, Taniece R. Eure, Wendy Bamberg, Grant Barney, Devra Barter, et al. “Documentation of Acute Change in Mental Status in Nursing Homes Highlights Opportunity to Augment Infection Surveillance Criteria.” Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology 41, no. 7 (2020): 848–50. doi:10.1017/ice.2020.77.

Rights

This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Public Domain Mark 1.0

Subjects

Abstract

Acute change in mental status (ACMS), defined by the Confusion Assessment Method, is used to identify infections in nursing home residents. A medical record review revealed that none of 15,276 residents had an ACMS documented. Using the revised McGeer criteria with a possible ACMS definition, we identified 296 residents and 21 additional infections. The use of a possible ACMS definition should be considered for retrospective nursing home infection surveillance.