CDC reminds clinicians to have a high suspicion for influenza and recommends rapid antiviral treatment of high-risk patients with suspected influenza.

From https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/han00419.asp

Summary
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is issuing this health advisory to notify clinicians that influenza activity remains high in the United States, with an increasing proportion of activity due to influenza A(H3N2) viruses, continued circulation of influenza A(H1N1) viruses, and low levels of influenza B viruses. Influenza should be considered as a possible diagnosis for patients with respiratory illness while local influenza activity remains elevated. Because influenza A(H3N2) viruses may be associated with severe disease in older adults, this health advisory serves as a reminder that early empiric treatment with influenza antiviral medications is recommended for hospitalized and high-risk patients, especially those 65 years and older. Antiviral treatment should be started as soon as possible after illness onset and should not wait for laboratory confirmation.

Specialized Infection Prevention and Control Training for Nursing Home Staff in the Long-Term Care Setting is Now Available

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collaborated on the development of a free on-line training course in infection prevention and control for nursing home staff in the long-term care setting.

The training provides approximately 19 hours of continuing education credits as well as a certificate of completion (i.e., free CME, CNE or CEUs).

The course introduces and describes how to use IPC program implementation resources including policy and procedure templates, audit tools, and outbreak investigation tools.

The course is made up of 23 modules and sub-modules that can be completed in any order and over multiple sessions.

The course covers:

• Core activities of effective IPC programs
• Recommended IPC practices to reduce
• Pathogen transmission
• Healthcare-associated infections
• Antibiotic resistance

All Cause Harm Prevention in Nursing Homes Applying Strategies from the New CMS Change Package

Thursday, January 24, 2019, 3:00pm ET (1 hour) Recording Available.

One-third of SNF residents experience an adverse or temporary harm event, and the majority of those are preventable. As part of CMS’s focus on raising awareness of nursing home safety and to support safer nursing home care across the nation, CMS and the Quality Innovation Network National Coordinating Center released a new resource: a Change Package to prevent all cause harm in nursing homes. The Change Package is a compendium of successful practices of high-performing nursing homes, illustrating how they prevent harm while honoring each resident’s rights and preferences.

Change Package to prevent harm related to medication adverse events, other adverse events, infection, and abuse,and neglect for nursing home residents.

Some states, including Texas, have urged nursing homes to check their freezers for ground beef that may be recalled in this Class ! recall, meaning the beef should not be consumed.

Nursing homes can have the most beautiful policies and procedures for infection prevention and control in the world, but if staff aren’t following through on them, they are a waste of paper, notes Deb Patterson Burdsall, PhD, RN-BC, CIC, FAPIC, an infection prevention and control consultant and faculty member at the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) in Arlington, VA.

“So monitoring and auditing infection prevention processes in the facility is a critical component of quality care,” says Burdsall. “Unfortunately, the focus on infection prevention has not always been well-supported because infection surveillance, monitoring whether proper supplies are available and used correctly, and watching whether staff are performing hand hygiene and correctly using personal protective equipment all take time, which means the effort costs money.”

New toolkit alert from the National Nursing Home Quality Improvement Campaign:

The Minnesota Department of Health's toolkit for C. diff infection (CDI) prevention and management in long-term care includes resources in six topic areas: prepare, detect, contain, clean, prevent, and educate.

Through Oct. 13, influenza activity remained low across the United States. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expects flu outbreaks to increase in the coming months. Avoiding and minimizing flu outbreaks not only protects residents and staff, it protects the facility as well given the laser focus on infection prevention and control that state surveyors have had during the first year of the Long-term Care Survey Process (LTCSP).

Directors of nursing services (DNSs) can work with the interdisciplinary team, residents, and families to reduce the risk of influenza transmission and minimize any outbreaks that occur. Limiting transmission requires a bundled approach, including the following steps:

Health care personnel working in long-term care settings, the majority of whom work as assistants or aides, have lower influenza vaccination coverage than do health care personnel working in all other health care settings, which puts the elderly in long-term settings at increased risk for severe complications for influenza. Implementing workplace strategies shown to improve vaccination coverage among health care personnel, including vaccination requirements and active promotion of on-site vaccinations at no cost, can help ensure health care personnel and patients are protected against influenza. 

The top five most commonly cited F-tags in the new Long-term Care Survey Process (LTCSP) haven’t changed much since Feb. 26, when AADNS first took a look at the data available in QCOR, the Quality, Certification, and Oversight Reports site of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). F880 (Infection Prevention and Control) maintains its position as the most frequently cited new survey tag across the country. In addition. F880 is the third most-cited new F-tag with a severity level of F or above, as well as the 10th most-cited tag with a severity level of J, K, or L (immediate jeopardy).