First year of mandatory reporting of healthcare-associated infections, Pennsylvania: an infection control-chart abstractor collaboration.

Background: In 2004, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania mandated hospitals to report healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). The increased workload led our Infection Control staff to collaborate with Atlas, a group of chart abstractors.

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess our first year of experience with mandatory reporting of HAIs--specifically, to assess Atlas' contribution to surveillance.