Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced the release of a complementary guide educating healthcare organisations on building and maintaining successful infection prevention programs. Building a High Performing Infection Prevention and Control Program details the key elements of a quality-driven program that leverages real-time clinical surveillance to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and improve patient safety.
Healthcare organisations with high-performing infection prevention programs have reduced certain HAI rates by as much as 68 percent. However, infection prevention and control remains an intractable challenge. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on any given day, approximately 1 in 25 hospital patients has at least one HAI. There were 721,000 HAIs in U.S. acute care hospitals in 2011 and about 75,000 hospital patients with HAIs died during their hospitalisations.
The e-book outlines HAIs, multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) and other challenges facing infection preventionists and outlines the characteristics and implementation of a quality-driven infection prevention and control program. It also explores the benefits of electronic surveillance systems such as Sentri7® that aggregate data from across the organization to accelerate analysis and eliminate delays in identification of sentinel events.
Sentri7 is a web-based, real-time, decision support application that drives continuous improvement and empowers healthcare organizations to achieve excellence in care delivery. It addresses multiple infection prevention responsibilities, including investigation of HAIs, isolation management, MDRO management and compliance with federal and state reporting requirements.
