Detection of Clostridium difficile infection clusters, using the temporal scan statistic, in a community hospital in southern Ontario, Canada, 2006–2011

BackgroundIn hospitals, Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) surveillance relies on unvalidated guidelines or threshold criteria to identify outbreaks. This can result in false-positive and -negative cluster alarms. The application of statistical methods to identify and understand CDI clusters may be a useful alternative or complement to standard surveillance techniques. The objectives of this study were to investigate the utility of the …