Volume 12, Number 1, January 2006

Pathogen Transmission and Clinic Scheduling

John R. Hotchkiss,* David G. Strike,†‡ and Philip S. Crooke§
*University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; †Regions Hospital, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; ‡University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; and §Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Figure 2. Risk that an uncontaminated patient will become contaminated during his or her clinic visit as a function of pathogen prevalence in incident patients and clinic infection-control practices. A) Predicted effects of temporally segregating patients at high risk of being infectious to appointments at the end of the clinic day, using a screening instrument that is either 70% sensitive and specific or 90% sensitive and specific. Transmission, hand hygiene, and environmental decontamination probabilities are as given in Table 1. B) Effects of varying levels of effective caregiver hand hygiene (25%, 50%, or 75%) on pathogen dissemination. All other inputs (probabilities of contamination) are identical to those in A. Each data point represents the mean of 2,000 simulations of a model day. An annotated copy of the model, as well as more detailed simulations and supporting material, may be obtained from the corresponding author.

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Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal
National Center for Infectious Diseases
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention