Center for Excellence in Rural Health-Hazard

State’s hospitals collaborate to reduce infections

KENTUCKY HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION REPORT

LOUISVILLE − Thirty-three Kentucky hospitals are participating in a patient safety improvement collaborative called “On the CUSP: Stop BSI.”

Medical devices can cause blood stream infections (BSIs) including central line-associated blood stream infections and catheter-associated urinary tract infections. To help address the problem, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, has funded “On the CUSP: Stop BSI“ and collaborated with the Health Research and Educational Trust, the Johns Hopkins University Quality & Safety Research Group and the Keystone Center for Patient Safety and Quality of the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.

The Kentucky Hospital Association (KHA) is organizing the efforts of the 33 Kentucky hospitals through their voluntary participation in “On the CUSP: Stop BSI.”

The AHRQ-funded project utilizes the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP), which combines communication, teamwork and leadership to create and support a “harm free” patient care culture. CUSP provides a structured strategic framework for safety improvement, yet is flexible enough to tap into hospital staff insight while encouraging them to fix potential problem areas that could pose a potential risk to patients. As a result of applying CUSP in more than 100 intensive care units in Michigan and using the program’s five-step checklist, the project reduced the rate of BSIs from intravenous lines by two-thirds within three months.

Kentucky hospitals have seen similar successes. KHA is working with the hospitals to prevent infections by ensuring they have the education, training, resources and framework needed to improve safety. In Kentucky, the CUSP program was rolled out in August 2010 and participating hospitals reduced their infection rates to well below national rates in the first year.

KHA has expanded the “On the CUSP: Stop BSI” program to address catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) and kicked off this latest collaborative in September. There are 20 Kentucky hospitals participating in the CAUTI safety initiative.

KHA also recently participated in the first Kentucky Infection Prevention Boot Camp. The event was held Oct. 11-14 in Louisville and was attended by more than 230 health care professionals from all types of health care settings including long-term care facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, public health settings and hospitals (97 of the state’s 130 hospitals participated). Attendees shared the common goal to reduce the risk of health care related infections.

A partnership of health care stakeholders including KHA, the University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences, the Kentucky Department for Public Health and Health Care Excel of Kentucky hosted the four-day workshop to increase the knowledge and resources of Kentucky health care workers whose job it is to reduce infections in health care settings by ensuring safe work practices/protocols, hand hygiene and cleaning procedures found to minimize the risk of infections.

The program was developed with input and leadership from infection preventionists throughout Kentucky. Ruth Carrico, of the UofL School of Public Health and Information Sciences, was instrumental in developing the workshop. She was recently appointed by Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the Healthcare Infection Control Practice Advisory Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which makes policy recommendations regarding infection prevention standards.

“The best way to prevent infections in all health care settings is to train health care professionals by providing them with evidenced-based practices and the knowledge necessary to prevent infections before they happen, as well as identifying who is at risk and from what,” Carrico said.

The job of an infection preventionist is a challenge due to the tremendous amount of ongoing learning as new guidelines, technology and reporting requirements emerge requiring health care professionals to think differently about infection prevention. Bringing together this workforce for a hands-on, interactive training opportunity is a novel approach for health care-associated infection prevention.

The Kentucky Infection Prevention Boot Camp provided health care workers with the technical knowledge and skills required to effectively prevent and control infection within their health care setting. Preventing infections saves lives and improves outcomes − the overarching mission of the four stakeholder groups that sponsored the comprehensive training workshop.