Patient Referral Patterns and the Spread of Hospital-Acquired Infections through National Health Care Networks
Figure 3
Patients referred between hospitals in the Netherlands.
A) The reconstructed Dutch health care network based on the potential infection rate between hospitals, red squares denote university medical centers, blue triangles the top clinical and black circles the general hospitals. B) Inward (blue), outward (red) and relative inward (black) degree of connectedness per hospitals category, calculated from the Dutch medical registration. The relative indegree is the indegree divided by the total number of admissions. Solid lines show mean degree per category and the dashed line shows the overall mean degree. University medical centers take a clear central position, in the sense that they have a high degree of connectedness. The network is directional towards the UMCs as they have a higher indegree than outdegree.