Characteristics of LTCFs and representativeness of data sample

LTCF: long-term care facility.

Selected LTCF types: Only general nursing homes, residential homes and mixed LTCFs.

* Poor or very poor national representativeness of LTCF sample

Data from the ECDC-HALT point prevalence survey of healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial use in long-term care facilities in 2016-2017 as reported to TESSy.

Sample representativeness appreciation based on methodology of selecting institutions and sample size:
- Optimal: representative systematic random sample of national LTCFs (none of the participating countries achieved this criteria).
- Good: more than 25 LTCFs, thus including a sufficient number of residents.
- Poor: between 5 and 25 included LTCFs in countries with more than 25 LTCFs OR less than 5 included LTCFs in countries with more than 5 LTCFs, but inclusion of 50–75% of all LTCFs or occupied LTCF beds in the country.
- Very poor: inclusion of less than 5 LTCFs, and less than 50% of all LTCFs and less than 50% of all occupied LTCF beds.

* Denominator data from the European LTCF register