ArticlePloS one2012
Hospital networks and the dispersal of hospital-acquired pathogens by patient transfer.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 131 citations in OpenAlex.
- Applications of network analysis to routinely collected health care data: a systematic review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2018Pooled it
- Reconstructing healthcare networks from patient transfer data: A systematic review.PLOS digital health · 2026Article
- Mapping the landscape of mathematical models for antimicrobial resistance: a scoping review.BMC public health · 2026Article
- When clinicians group together: a scoping review of clustering in patient-sharing networks.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Improving containment and prevention strategies using a patient transfer network representative of patients with multidrug-resistant organisms.Infection control and hospital epidemiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Transmission thresholds for the spread of infections in healthcare facilities.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Mitigating antimicrobial resistance by innovative solutions in AI (MARISA): a modified James Lind Alliance analysis.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2025Article
- Identifying opioid agonist treatment prescriber networks from health administrative data: A validation study.PloS one · 2025Article
- States of Resistance: nosocomial and environmental approaches to antimicrobial resistance in Lebanon.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2024Article
- Carbapenemase-producing enterobacterales colonisation status does not lead to more frequent admissions: a linked patient study.Antimicrobial resistance and infection control · 2024Article
- Regional patient transfer patterns matter for the spread of hospital-acquired pathogens.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Transmission of drug-resistant bacteria in a hospital-community model stratified by patient risk.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Contact investigations for antibiotic-resistant bacteria: a mixed-methods study of patients' comprehension of and compliance with self-sampling requests post-discharge.Antimicrobial resistance and infection control · 2023Article
- Molecular characterization and prevalence ofJournal of Taibah University Medical Sciences · 2023Article
- Serratia marcescens Colonization in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Has Multiple Sources, with Sink Drains as a Major Reservoir.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2023Article
- Quantifying patient- and hospital-level antimicrobial resistance dynamics inmedRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2023Article
- Prevalence and Molecular Typing of Carbapenemase-Producing Enterobacterales among Newborn Patients in Italy.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Association of Exposure to High-risk Antibiotics in Acute Care Hospitals With Multidrug-Resistant Organism Burden in Nursing Homes.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Review of social networks of professionals in healthcare settings-where are we and what else is needed?Globalization and health · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are often seen as preventable incidents that result from unsafe practices or poor hospital hygiene. This however ignores the fact that transmissibility is not only a property of the causative organisms but also of the hosts who can translocate bacteria when moving between hospitals. In an epidemiological sense, hospitals become connected through the patients they share. We here postulate that the degree of hospital connectedness crucially influences the rates of infections caused by hospital-acquired bacteria. To test this hypothesis, we mapped the movement of patients based on the UK-NHS Hospital Episode Statistics and observed that the proportion of patients admitted to a hospital after a recent episode in another hospital correlates with the hospital-specific incidence rate of MRSA bacteraemia as recorded by mandatory reporting. We observed a positive correlation between hospital connectedness and MRSA bacteraemia incidence rate that is significant for all financial years since 2001 except for 2008-09. All years combined, this correlation is positive and significantly different from zero (partial correlation coefficient r = 0.33 (0.28 to 0.38)). When comparing the referral pattern for English hospitals with referral patterns observed in the Netherlands, we predict that English hospitals more likely see a swifter and more sustained spread of HAIs. Our results indicate that hospitals cannot be viewed as individual units but rather should be viewed as connected elements of larger modular networks. Our findings stress the importance of cooperative effects that will have a bearing on the planning of health care systems, patient management and hospital infection control.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.