A whitepaper published in the journal Infection Control and Epidemiology outlines some of the most important things a hospital should know about building the infrastructure for an infection control and prevention program.
Highlighted below are five takeaways from the whitepaper:
1. Three factors that should determine the scope of an institution's program include the size and complexity of the patient population served, the population's risk for healthcare-associated infections and any regulatory or accreditation requirements.
2. Essential activities of any program include surveillance, HAI performance improvement efforts, acute event response, personnel and patient education and training, and HAI reporting to the CDC and any other entities required by law.
3. Effective infection control programs should be multidisciplinary, with experts from both infection prevention and healthcare epidemiology.
4. Program personnel should have authority designated from institutional leadership to implement changes in infection control and prevention efforts.
5. The budget allocated for a program should support both an adequate number of personnel to execute improvement efforts and the scope and complexity of program activities.