A Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare‐Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals
From the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston (D.S.Y., M.K.), and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Cambridge (F.A.G.), Massachusetts; the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island (L.A.M.); the Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina (D.J.A., K.S.K.); the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (K.M.A.) and the National Quality Forum (H.B.), Washington, D.C.; the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York (D.P.C.); the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (S.E.C.); the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (E.R.D., V.F., J.M.); the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine (D.N.G.), the Stroger (Cook County) Hospital and the Rush University Medical Center (R.A.W.), Chicago, the Joint Commission, Oakbrook Terrace (K.P., R.W.), and the Hines Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Hines (D.N.G.), Illinois; the Hackensack University Medical Center, Hackensack (P.G.), and the University of Medicine and Dentistry–New Jersey Medical School, Newark (P.G.), New Jersey; the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (D.A.P.); the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and University, Baltimore, Maryland (T.M.P.); the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan (S.S.); the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston (C.D.S.); the University of Utah, Salt Lake City (D.C.); and the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada (E.L., L.N.).
Preventable healthcare‐associated infections (HAIs) occur in US hospitals. Preventing these infections is a national priority, with initiatives led by healthcare organizations, professional associations, government and accrediting agencies, legislators, regulators, payers, and consumer advocacy groups. To assist acute care hospitals in focusing and prioritizing efforts to implement evidence‐based practices for prevention of HAIs, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the Infectious Diseases Society of America Standards and Practice Guidelines Committee appointed a task force to create a concise compendium of recommendations for the prevention of common HAIs. This compendium is implementation focused and differs from most previously published guidelines in that it highlights a set of basic HAI prevention strategies plus special approaches for use in locations and/or populations within the hospital when infections are not controlled by use of basic practices, recommends that accountability for implementing infection prevention practices be assigned to specific groups and individuals, and includes proposed performance measures for internal quality improvement efforts.
Accepted June 9, 2008; electronically published September 16, 2008.
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