Infection Prevention in Long-Term Care

By the end of this module, medical directors will understand how to apply a systems approach to problem solving in the nursing home environment so they can improve safety, quality and health outcomes for residents. They will learn how to measure the impact of quality improvement initiatives and identify how systems theory can help with infection prevention and control.

How can your nursing home team benefit from using the Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (QAPI) process? Listen to this TMF Quality Innovation Network webinar recording from Sept. 12, 2024, to learn about tools and resources you and your team can use to help guide you through the QAPI process.

Moving Needles is a five-year cooperative agreement between PALTmed (Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medical Association, formerly known as AMDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They provide strategies and ideas for evidence-based quality improvement projects to improve immunization rates in nursing homes.

This tool, prepared by Alliant Health Solutions, a Hospital Quality Improvement Contractor (HQIC), is a changeable spreadsheet designed to support nursing facility infection prevention and control (IPC) surveillance.

Listen to this July 18, 2024, Nursing Home Connect webinar recording from the TMF Quality Innovation Network to learn how to use decolonization in nursing homes as a strategy to prevent multidrug-resistant organism (MDRO) infections and hospitalizations. This session also explores implementation strategies that are both practical and feasible for your facility.

Nursing home staff can use this flowchart from the TMF Quality Innovation Network to help determine when to implement standard and enhanced barrier precautions.

Listen to this June 20, 2024, Nursing Home Connect webinar recording from the TMF Quality Innovation Network to hear TMF Health Quality Institute’s LaNeidra Williams and Betsy Beard, registered dental hygienists, discuss how proper oral care can protect residents from developing pneumonia and/or sepsis.

Watch this updated TMF Quality Innovation Network Nursing Home Connect webinar recording from June 11, 2024, to learn about nursing home facility infection control procedures, including vaccinations, as a way to prevent sepsis and associated hospital readmissions.

Listen to this May 2, 2024, Nursing Home Connect webinar recording from the TMF Quality Innovation Network to learn how sepsis develops from a urinary tract infection. Listeners will also learn the symptoms of sepsis, risk factors for developing a sepsis infection and how to diagnosis and treat it, and most importantly, how to prevent a sepsis infection in the first place.

This toolkit, from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, provides tips and tools to help staff engage residents and families and provide needed education about how infections are treated in the facility.

This resource from the Health Quality Innovation Network is intended to help nursing home staff perform a peri care audit. Note: Ensure the tool follows your facility’s policy and procedure.

In this module 2 of TMF's monthly CMD training series, medical directors will understand the importance of implementing a successful infection prevention and control program (IPC) in the nursing home setting and how to integrate IPC into their Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (QAPI) program.

Listen to this TMF Quality Innovation Network Nursing Home Connect webinar recording from April 4, 2024, to learn how nursing home staff can identify symptoms of Long COVID and address issues that can lead to functional decline. Listeners can also learn how to minimize impacts and help residents improve.

This Sept. 21 webinar recording explores the benefits of and recommendations for pneumonia and influenza vaccines for residents and staff. Additionally, TMF Quality Innovation Network–Quality Improvement Organization specialists discuss how nursing facilities can use data to improve vaccination processes for tracking and reporting.

This April 20, 2023, LTC Connect recording focuses on reducing hospitalizations due to pneumonia and sepsis facility-acquired infections. TMF Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization specialists reviewed pneumonia and sepsis in the nursing home setting and explore how to reduce hospitalizations by creating clinical champions and using advance care planning.

This series of nearly 20 different infection prevention reference cards from the Health Quality Innovation Network can be downloaded and shared with frontline health care staff. Topics include enhanced barrier precautions, personal protective equipment, cleaning and disinfection, and transmission-based precautions.

This March 16, 2023, LTC Connect recording focuses on reducing hospitalizations due to facility-acquired infections and antibiotic stewardship. TMF Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization specialists discussed how proper identification of urinary tract infections and having an antibiotic stewardship process can help to decrease unnecessary antibiotics as well as help to reduce emergency department visits and readmissions for your residents.

This situation, background, assessment, recommendation (SBAR) toolkit from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) helps nursing staff communicate about suspected urinary tract infections (UTIs) with prescribing clinicians to determine the need for antibiotics.

Use this tool with the pneumonia example to help you set up your measures for reporting your quality improvement project. This document is a draft of suggestions and must be modified by the facility team to ensure they reflect their QI work.

Use this tool with influenza and pneumonia examples to help your team develop the quality improvement plan based on your root case analysis. This document is a draft of suggestions and must be modified by the facility team to ensure they reflect their QI work.

Use this tool with the influenza example to help you set up your measures for reporting your quality improvement project. This document is a draft of suggestions and must be modified by the facility team to ensure they reflect their QI work.

Use this document to help you set up your measures for reporting your quality improvement (QI) project. This document is a draft of suggestions and must be modified by the facility team to ensure they reflect their QI work.

Use this tool to help your team develop the quality improvement (QI) plan based on your root case analysis. This document is a draft of suggestions and must be modified by the facility team to ensure they reflect their QI work.

Use this fishbone diagram to help your organization conduct a root cause analysis. This document is a draft of suggestions and must be modified by the facility team to ensure they reflect their quality improvement work.

This Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - AHRQ - document provides guidance on what fit testing is, how to do it and what the person being tested can expect.

Download this latest version of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) Nursing Home Visitation FAQs, which were updated Feb. 2, 2022, with information about testing visitors for COVID-19, improving air flow and air quality in facilities and funding available for environmental changes, which could potentially reduce transmission of COVID-19.

This quality improvement plan provides an example of how to identify a concern, determine the root cause(s) and develop a plan with outcome measures. This is to be used only as a reference.

View this video recording to learn more about the Quality Measures (QM) specification for the percent of short-stay residents who were accessed and appropriately given the pneumococcal vaccine. Duration: 13:24

Listen to this Sept. 17, 2020, recording presented by TMF Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization webinar. Dr. Buffy Lloyd-Krejci with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières shares findings from visits to nursing homes in Houston/Harris County. Click here to view the slide presentation for this webinar. https://tmfnetworks.org/Portals/0/Resource%20Center/091720%20Office%20Hrs%20PPT_COVID-19_Final_508.pdf

This Quality Measures Tip Sheet provides an overview of the urinary tract infection (long-stay) measure, MDS coding requirements, possible root causes and more.

This video reviews the quality measure specification for the percent of long-stay residents with a urinary tract infection to identify the relationship between the Minimum Data Set and this quality measure.

The Quality Measure Tip Sheet provides an overview of the influenza vaccine measure, MDS coding requirements and additional tips and assessment considerations.

This Quality Measures Tip Sheet provides an overview of the pneumonia vaccine measure, MDS coding requirements and additional tips and assessment considerations

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released a set of training modules to help educate nursing home staff on key patient safety concepts critical to improving the safety of nursing home residents. Each of the modules has an instructor’s guide and a student workbook.