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In its updated guidance on infection control measures and 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges health care facilities to use a hierarchy of controls and provides examples of measures they should take.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered additional guidance on policies related to exposed or ill health care workers:
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The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) wants to know about cases of serious illness or fatality related to novel H1N1 among health care workers.
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The new focus on record keeping by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration will not target hospitals, but hospital employers still should be prepared for greater scrutiny of their OSHA 300 logs, according to an expert in workplace safety compliance.
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In an intense effort to improve influenza vaccination rates, more hospitals and health systems are moving toward mandatory policies for immunizing health care workers. But a closer look at vaccination rates reveals that hospitals are actually already vaccinating almost two-thirds of their employees (63%), while vaccinations lag at nursing homes and ambulatory care centers.
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Infection prevention is a top priority of an ambitious new quality improvement effort that could lead to new accreditation standards for the nation's hospitals, says Mark R. Chassin, MD, MPP, MPH, president of The Joint Commission.
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A hand hygiene project launched at The Joint Commission's Center for Transforming Healthcare cites the following problems and solutions on hand hygiene:
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The fact that The Joint Commission had to recently issue a Sentinel Event Alert underscoring leadership's critical role in patient safety and quality care is "somewhat sad," notes Ronald B. Goodspeed, MD, MPH, FACP, FACPE, an instructor on health care management in the department of health policy and management, Harvard School of Public Health and former president of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors.
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Looking at the historically low compliance numbers surrounding hand hygiene, Stephen Weber, MD, Joint Commission consultant and chief health care epidemiologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, can only shake his head.
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As limited amounts of the first doses of novel H1N1 vaccine were expected to reach providers in early October, hospitals placed a top priority on vaccinating health care workers who provide care to the most vulnerable patients. Even health care workers who have had flu-like symptoms and were diagnosed with novel H1N1 should receive the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
