Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care: Version 2.2 - November 2015

Details

• Corporate Authors:
  National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (U.S.). Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion ; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.) ; Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (U.S.)
• Description:
  The following document is a summary guide of infection prevention recommendations for outpatient (ambulatory care) settings. The recommendations included in this document are not new but rather reflect existing evidence-based guidelines produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee. This summary guide is based primarily upon elements of Standard Precautions and represents the minimum infection prevention expectations for safe care in outpatient settings. Readers are urged to use the Infection Prevention Checklist for Outpatient Settings (Appendix A), a companion to the summary guide, and to consult the full guidelines for additional background, rationale, and evidence behind each recommendation.
  
  The transition of healthcare delivery from acute care hospitals to outpatient (ambulatory care) settings, along with ongoing outbreaks and patient notification events (http://www.cdc. gov/HAI/settings/outpatient/outbreaks-patient-notifications.html), have demonstrated the need for greater understanding and implementation of basic infection prevention guidance. This Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care distills existing infection prevention guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC).
  
  Over the past several decades, we have witnessed a significant shift in healthcare delivery from the acute, inpatient hospital setting to a variety of outpatient and community-based settings. Outpatient care is provided in hospital-based outpatient clinics, nonhospital-based clinics and physician offices, ambulatory surgical centers, and many other specialized settings. Americans have frequent encounters with outpatient settings. For example, more than three-quarters of all operations in the United States are performed in settings outside the hospital.1 In addition, between 1995 and 2007, the average person made three visits each year to physician offices.2 By 2007, the total number of physician offices visits approached one billion.3 Vulnerable patient populations rely on frequent and intensive use of outpatient care to maintain or improve their health. For example, each year more than one million cancer patients receive outpatient chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or both4. It is critical that all of this care be provided under conditions that minimize or eliminate risks of healthcare-associated infections (HAI).
  
  Compared to inpatient acute care settings, outpatient settings have traditionally lacked infrastructure and resources to support infection prevention and surveillance activities5,6,7. While data describing risks for HAI are lacking for most outpatient settings, numerous outbreak reports have described transmission of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, mycobacteria, viruses, and parasites8,9. In many instances, outbreaks and other adverse events were associated with breakdowns in basic infection prevention procedures (e.g., reuse of syringes leading to transmission of bloodborne viruses).
  
  All healthcare settings, regardless of the level of care provided, must make infection prevention a priority and must be equipped to observe Standard Precautions. The 2007 CDC and HICPAC Guideline for Isolation Precautions was a first attempt to provide recommendations that can be applied in all healthcare settings. The Guide presented here is based primarily upon elements of Standard Precautions from that guideline and represents the minimum infection prevention expectations for safe care in outpatient settings. It is intended for use by anyone needing information about general infection prevention measures in outpatient settings. To assist with conducting periodic assessments of infection prevention policies and practices, the reader is referred to the Infection Prevention Checklist for Outpatient Settings, which appears at the end of this document as Appendix A
  
  
• Subjects:
  Ambulatory Care Ambulatory Care Facilities Ambulatory Care Facilities / Standards Cross Infection Cross Infection / Prevention & Control Infection Control Infection Control / Methods Outpatients
• Keywords:
  CS260705 HAI Healthcare-Associated Infections
• Publisher:
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (U.S.)
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Guidance
• Rights:
  Public Domain
• CIO:
  National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID)
• Division:
  DHQP - Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
• Topic:
  Diseases & Conditions
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  42 pdf pages
• Collection(s):
  Stephen B. Thacker CDC Library Infectious Diseases
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:c86507b03cdadf97bcc19be54b38de270814fe4a6724ac78e72c6a85ea8e68817eeeb1e1ce50502f9cf6855fb00c17b1e4861c2d718353884472653d3e00c284
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/40073/cdc_40073_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.44 MB ]