DECREASING INFECTIONS IN HEALTHCARE SETTINGS
by Sharon Eloranta, Medical Director, Quality and Safety Initiatives, Qualis Health At Qualis Health, we are working to decrease healthcare associated infections (HAIs) in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and outpatient/ambulatory surgery centers. Healthcare associated infections are relatively rare, but can be devastating to patients and families and costly for the healthcare system and payers. It is clear that different strategies are needed to reduce these infections in different settings, even though the basics of infection prevention are the same throughout the healthcare system. As an externally-funded consulting organization, Qualis Health is unique in that our services are provided through funding from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, meaning that our providers work with us voluntarily. As such, our task is to identify what would motivate providers to participate with us – and conversely, what barriers might limit participation. We’ve been able to address most of these barriers by linking healthcare associated infections to pay-for-performance programs and to upcoming rule-making that specifies new expectations for infection prevention programs across various settings. At the individual hospital and unit level, the defining element for success is strong support at the leadership level – looking at healthcare associated infections as a true patient safety concern. Luckily for us, offering assistance in meeting these external demands is often successful. However, we also cannot declare victory – infections continue to emerge, and changes on the system level take time to achieve. Continuous vigilance is needed to ensure that preventive measures remain in place. Organizations must continue to monitor problem areas and be ready to intervene if data indicate an emerging problem. One key issue: In hospitals, the infection preventionists are spread very thin. In order to help hospitals focus this scarce resource, a recent initiative of ours provided reports to help facilities target the individual units within their buildings that are contributing to the highest numbers of infections. This number is compared to what similar units might expect for that infection type on the national scale). We called this the “Wheel of Misfortune,” which prevents the “spray and pray” approach and allows the infection preventionists to deploy targeted interventions at the level that will do the most good. We also championed the use of the related Centers for Disease Control’s Target-Assess-Prevent (TAP) survey, which creates a list of infection prevention processes that are reported by all levels of staff to be highly...
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The Washington State Medical Association Foundation for Health Care Improvement has been hard at work on behalf of patients and physicians this past year. Accelerating the implementation of the Choosing Wisely campaign and launching the Honoring Choices Pacific Northwest advance care planning program were our top priorities.
Read MoreDon’t miss the 14th Northwest Patient Safety Conference on May 4, 2016!
Join patient safety leaders from across the region to learn, share, and be inspired. Presentations and discussions will address our theme – Patients and Families, Partners in Safe Care. We are seeking speakers and poster presenters from a variety of care settings and perspectives.
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