Urinary tract infection: A less well-known winter risk?

In the normal course of events associated with managing the care of older people, data are often gathered for a particular purpose, such as compliance with government regulations, which could be useful in enhancing local understanding of service operations such as standards of care. Benefits for both the organisation and service recipients can flow from a secondary or adjunct analysis of these data. In this instance, data gathered on urinary tract infection (UTI) in aged care homes in Australia and New Zealand are considered against a backdrop of environmental temperature change or seasons, producing patterns of UTI rates and suggesting a causal link. QPS Benchmarking involves over 500 facilities in Australia and New Zealand, where trend analysis is showing a higher rate of UTI occurring in colder areas in both countries as well as during colder months of the year. While the pattern is variable, it is quite common (35% of UTI participants) for cold climate facilities to experience higher UTI rates than warmer locations. Face validity (the extent to which a test measures what it is intended to measure) of this finding was established through focused consultations with clinical experts. When these data are considered across the 2008–09 rates, there is a 15.46% increase in UTI from summer to winter. The implications of this insight lie in providers of aged care and support being more aware of the dangers of UTI during cooler times and taking steps to prevent its occurrence or to manage it in ways that reduce the misery associated with such an infection.

This is the second in a series of papers on quality benchmarking. The first, ‘Quality performance systems in aged care services’, was published in Journal of Care Services Management, Vol. 3, No. 4.