Patient Referral Patterns and the Spread of Hospital-Acquired Infections through National Health Care Networks
Figure 4
Impact of directionality of the hospital network on the spread of hospital acquired infections.
We created three networks with alternative directions. One with equal referral probabilities to all other hospitals (A, B & C), one exact reversion of the original network (D, E & F) and one with an exaggerated reversion of the direction (G, H & I). A, D & G show the time to encounter of the first colonized patient, B, E & H show the prevalence among admitted patients and C, F & I show the indegree (blue), outdegree (red) and relative indegree (black). Reversion of the network direction leads to a lower prevalence in university medical centers, while they are still the first to encounter the infection, showing that the relative indegree, the indegree divided by the total number of admissions, relates to the found prevalence and the high absolute indegree relates to the time to first encounter.