Ours is fairly similar in that we do direct observation; we focus mostly on the inpatient units, although it’ s conducted in some outpatient departments like hemodialysis and other specific areas. We’ re getting ready to launch an ambulatory, like clinic-based, system fairly soon, but for our inpatient areas, each unit is given the number of observations that they have to complete each month based on Leapfrog, and they can decide who they want to do those observations.”— Marci Drees, MD, MS, DTMH, FACP, FSHEA

facilities. So, at least we’ re all recording it in the same way so that we can look at aggregate data together and be looking at that as a system. In terms of who’ s doing the observations, it was a combination of people who were a covert observers, who unfortunately, they become known pretty quickly, and then others around the system who were involved in different ways. What we’ ve migrated to now is peer-to-peer observations, which are supplemented by additional staff as needed, or when we’ re wondering what might be going on in a unit, we might deploy some staff to take a look at it. But for the most part, the bulk of our observations are peer-to-peer, which we know has challenges in terms of the quality of the observations, and some of the biases that might exist.”

Marci Drees, MD, MS, DTMH, FACP, FSHEA, chief infection prevention officer at ChristianaCare, said,“ Ours is fairly similar in that we do direct observation; we focus mostly on the inpatient units, although it’ s conducted in some outpatient departments like hemodialysis and other specific areas. We’ re getting ready to launch an ambulatory, like clinic-based, system fairly soon, but for our inpatient areas, each unit is given the number of observations that they have to complete each month based on Leapfrog, and they can decide who they want to do those observations. Some nurse managers have every staff member do a handful, while some assign a smaller group to do all of them, but everyone has to go through our training before they have access to the app and it’ s the same app that they use for other patient-centered roundings so they’ re very familiar with it. We actually track not just hand hygiene— we only do in and out of the room— but we also do contact precautions compliance and we also conduct equipment compliance monitoring— did they clean equipment that they brought into the room? Those don’ t get as many observations, of course. And then using the same system, but separately, we have our infection preventionists do their rounds as well and then we can compare the those rounds from the IPs versus those rounds of the unit, and there is always a gap. It just is what it is. And we’ ve actually gone back and done some side-by-side observations of the same opportunity, and those seem to be pretty accurate. I don’ t think it’ s that they’ re not calling a missed opportunity, a

The Infection Prevention Exchange

By MD-Medical Data Quality & Safety Advisors, LLC

The IPEX Bundle

• Data

• Process Improvement

• Technology • Artificial Intelligence

Patient & Staff Safety

Patient Satisfaction Scores improved LeapFrog Scores improved

Financial & Operational Efficiencies 50-75 % Reductions in cost of infection

HEALTHCARE-ASSOCIATED INFECTIONS

Contact Tracing

50-75 % Reductions in infections

Inquiries: Medicaldatamanagement @ gmail. com