A three-year, $2.4 million CDC contract has established the Nebraska Infection Control Assessment and Promotion Program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine in Omaha.
In conjunction with the Nebraska HHS, the collaborators will partner with healthcare facilities across the state to implement guidelines and tools for infection prevention, specifically healthcare acquired-infections. The group will also evaluate the efficacy of existing measures, policies and provider training to detect and control infectious disease outbreaks.
The CDC estimates that about 4 percent of hospitalized Americans develop a hospital-associated infection, according to a UNMC news release.
"Four percent nationally may not sound like a lot, but when you realize there are tens of millions of hospitalized patients, this equates to one to two million infections per year and nearly 100,000 lives lost," Mark Rupp, MD, acting director of Nebraska's ICAP, said in a statement. "Each acute care facility in Nebraska has an infection control program in place, therefore, the ICAP will emphasize efforts to prevent infections in other types of health facilities such as ambulatory surgical centers, long-term care facilities and critical access hospitals."
The team will visit most types of patient care facilities, including long-term care, rehabilitation, surgical and acute care and anywhere patients are susceptible to HAIs, according to the release.