Today, on CDC’s Safe Healthcare Blog, Dr. Denise Cardo, director of CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, shares her thoughts on policies that can help improve infection control practices in outpatient settings to better protect patients. CDC has recently released a summary of Outpatient Settings Policy Options to assist state, local, and territorial health departments and policymakers to assess current outpatient policies and consider options for improving practices.
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Perspective – Outpatient Settings Policy Options for Improving Infection Prevention
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Author: Dr. Denise Cardo
Director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP)
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID),
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP)
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID),
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Every week in my role overseeing healthcare quality and patient safety for CDC, I hear stories about patients being harmed by providers who fail to understand the basics of infection control. All too often, these events occur inoutpatient settings. One recent example of this occurred when 13,700 surgery patients and 1,600 clinic or urgent care patients at Seattle Children’s Bellevue Clinic were notified that they could be at risk of infection due to breaches in the cleaning and sterilization of surgical instruments, and other errors related to device reprocessing. The hospital sent notifications to these patients and their families offering free testing for hepatitis B, C, and HIV.
Preventable situations like the one in Seattle highlight serious gaps in infection control practices. As a result, I have made it a priority to move beyond reacting to healthcare-associated outbreaks and towards proactively protecting patients: preventing outbreaks and patient notifications from happening in the first place. Healthcare delivery continues to shift from the acute, inpatient hospital setting to a variety of outpatient settings, making patient safety in all settings a critical mission we must achieve. Currently, there are highly variable policies in outpatient settings that can result in gaps in patient protection from healthcare-associated infections or other adverse events. Outpatient facilities and state health departments must work together to reduce the number of healthcare-associated outbreaks in outpatient facilities.
To support these efforts, CDC’s Outpatient Settings Policy Options for Improving Infection Prevention provides guidance for more proactive oversight of outpatient facilities. We designed this resource to assist health departments and policymakers at various levels to analyze current policies in outpatient settings, review proposed changes, and inspire possible changes to improve infection control practices. The policy document focuses on four key areas: facility licensing/accreditation, provider training and certification, reporting requirements and investigation authorities.
We need to protect patients wherever they receive their medical care. This begins by making sure we have systems in place to ensure safety. CDC looks forward to working with partners to achieve this goal.
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