BACKGROUND: Surgical @entity281 surveillance (SSI) is important for the improvement of care and @entity1 safety. Most SSI surveillance systems focus on hospital settings, whereas numerous infectious events occur after discharge. AIM: To evaluate the @entity1 care trajectory after discharge, we linked the hospital discharge database and the National Health Insurance Cross-Schemes Information System (NHI-CIS) to trace hip or knee @entity281 (HKAI). METHODS: A retrospective analysis was performed using the permanent 1/97th sample of the whole NHI-CIS database. A total of 1739 @entity1 underwent hip or knee arthroplasty between January 1st, 2011 and December 31st, 2011. @entity1 rehospitalized for HKAI were detected using a specific published algorithm. Non-rehospitalized HKAI @entity1 were identified using a novel tracking algorithm based on ambulatory care consumption: nurse intervention, antibiotics and bandage purchase. FINDINGS: Of the 1739 studied @entity1 , 20 @entity1 (1.1%) were rehospitalized for HKAI. Fourteen (70%) of the HKAI events occurred within the first two months after surgery, two occurring during the @entity1 ' surgical hospital stay. Using ambulatory care data, 10 additional cases were suspected of developing HKAI in the year following their surgery. HKAI incidence rate was then estimated to be 1.76% (95% confidence interval: 1.14-2.38%). CONCLUSION: Although the study sample was limited, we demonstrated that each HKAI occurring after discharge could not be traced by the in-hospital information system alone. This result emphasizes the need for having a passive routine tool for post-discharge surveillance such as the NHI-CIS database.

Health insurance database for post-discharge surveillance of surgical XXXX following arthroplasty.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['Patients', 'patients', 'patient'] @entity281 :: ('MESH:D007239', 'Disease') :: ['arthroplasty infection', 'site infection']
@entity281 :: (MESH:D007239,Disease) :: ['site infection']
