Some of the small hospitals have very few ventilated patients. When using the permutation table, there may be several weeks when there isn’t a patient on the ventilator in the ICU on the specified day for HOB observations. Should the hospital still adhere to the day listed in the table, or, should they record their observations when they have a ventilated patient in the ICU regardless of the day of the week?
The hospital should adhere to the permutation table. If there are no ventilated patients on the designated observation day, there will be nothing to count. Remember, hospitals that had less than 100 ventilator days in 2006 are exempt from reporting, so this may eliminate small hospitals.