In last week’s post we examined the human and financial toll of hospital acquired infections (HAIs). Now let’s discuss what you can do to get serious about effective prevention screening. The sooner you take meaningful steps to shore up infection efforts, the sooner your healthcare facility will benefit from the resulting cost-savings and improved quality of life in your community.
First, it’s important to understand whether your current infection control approach is in trouble. If your facility was penalized by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS’s) Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) reduction program or hit with additional penalties for having patients contract Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) during a hospital stay, then your among the healthcare organizations that need to improve. In addition to penalties, you’re also missing out on payment incentives from CMS’s Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program for reducing surgical site infections (SSIs) and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs). The good news is that you can do something about it.
Here are four tips for getting serious about effective infection prevention screening:
- Figure how much HAIs are raising your care-costs. You can’t address what you can’t measure, so the first step is to know exactly what HAIs are costing your facility. The average outlay of treating a patient with a CAUTI is nearly $900; C.diff costs more than $11,000 and SSIs are nearly $21,000 per case. The costs run even higher for ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) – more than $40,000 and $45,000 respectively.
Facilities lose even more in penalties and missed incentive payments when HAI rates are high. To get a clear and accurate picture of how badly HAIs impact a facility’s bottom line, each of these factors must be included in the equation.
2. Determine whether your infection preventionists are able work at the top of their license. In general, the role of an infection preventionist (IP) is to prevent, investigate, and manage the spread of infections in healthcare settings. The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) recommends one full-time IP for every 250 beds. Yet, more than half of acute-care facilities only have one (or fewer) full-time equivalent IPs. Many times, these individuals’ responsibilities go far beyond their original focus. This includes adapting processes for the emergence of lethal and resistant infections and viruses, such as Ebola and Zika. Furthermore, the demand for publicly reported infection data forces many IPs to devote a significant amount of time to data management. According to research presented at an APIC conference a few years ago, IPs are now spending more than five hours a day collecting, mining and reporting infection data. Clearly, IPs do not have enough hours in the day to keep up with today’s workload. Facilities must work to change this if they want to reduce infections.
3. Consider utilizing infection control technologies to increase efficiency. To maximize efficiencies and provide real-time data to help IPs detect and control infectious diseases, APIC encourages healthcare facilities to invest in infection tracking and monitoring technology. Various infection surveillance software and other automated electronic tools are now available to assist IPs in:
- identifying and validating potential HAIs in real time;
- expediting analysis of large numbers of medical records to identify infection clusters and outbreaks of high-risk pathogens;
- spotting trends that indicate the need to improve infection control practices; and
- eliminating errors associated with manual infection surveillance.
APIC provides guidance on choosing surveillance technology and a list of vendors that have the tools and software to assist healthcare facilities with national reporting. Effective support and information is available – take advantage of it.
4. Weigh the ROI of outsourcing infection data management to close resource gaps. Outsourcing infection prevention screening is one solution that can provide hospitals with the technology and the staff-equivalent hours to achieve infection prevention goals. For example, Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, Florida, partnered with a quality solutions provider for the technology and team of infection preventionists to alleviate staffing and data management burdens. In less than two years, the partnership resulted in a 45 percent reduction in CAUTI incidents, a 73 percent reduction in CLABSI incidents, and more than $1.2 million in savings in penalties and costs. In general, the cost to create an effective infection prevention program could be financed by avoiding ten or less SSIs annually.
While ultimately each hospital must find what works best for their unique infection control needs, evidence suggests the most effective infection control programs function like a well-oiled team with the IP quarterbacking a strong and vigilant ground game on hospital floors.
