Background:

The Pressure Ulcer is a recognised healthcare adverse event and a public health problem. The main goal in this work was to understand the status of the Hospital Acquired Pressure Ulcer (HAPU) from the public hospitals of the Valencian Community before (2012) and during the process of implementation of a specific prevention and treatment Practice Guideline for this matter (2013-2015).

Methods:

Retrospective study through the Minimum Basic Hospital Data Set (MBDS), and taking its variables as the input. The database had 15.594 cases of hospitalization with 71 variables. The tools utilized were classical statistical analysis, Multidimensional Scaling Analysis (MDS) and Self-Organized Maps (SOM).

Results:

The 90,83% of the admission in hospitals related to pressure ulcer treatment were admitted for a different reason than pressure ulcer itself and acquire it at the hospital. In relation to those Hospital Acquired Pressure Ulcer (HAPU) a temporal pattern was discovered, in a six-month cycle decreasing in August and September and increasing at the beginning of the year. The five main diagnoses associated to the HAPU had been detected and remain stable all over the study. A hospital classification has been done related to their behaviour based on its admissions as well, retrieving four types of behaviour.

Conclusions:

The MBDS proves to be a useful tool to retrieve a general overview of HAPU and identifying the risk patient profile where prevention strategies have to be strengthened.

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