A tale of two cows: Why we have a cow map and not a healthcare acquired infection map

CDDEP  13 Mar 2012  Author:Daniel Saman  At a recent healthcare innovations summit, Atul Gawande used the United States’ robust data-driven agricultural industry as a model that healthcare should emulate and commented that we even know the number of cows in every county. It is hard to imagine how cows have anything to do with healthcare acquired infections.  The former are gentle creatures that mankind has benefited from for ages, and the latter is an unrelenting plague causing significant death and disability in untold numbers.   It is estimated that these infections affect one-in-twenty hospitalized patients, but besides estimates and projections there is little hard evidence, just scant data from handpicked references or reports in the literature.  Read more