QAPI 115 - A Structured Approach to Infection Control Coverage of Outpatient Clinics Facilitates Consistent Quality Evaluations and Feedback Delivery

Background: Current recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The Joint Commission (TJC) emphasize the importance of strong infection prevention and control (IPC) practices in the outpatient healthcare setting to reduce risk of exposure to infectious pathogens and increase safety among patients and healthcare personnel (HCP). To properly assess that the recommended areas of focus are meeting regulatory standards, a need for standardized, structured walkthroughs of outpatient clinics along with consistent feedback to clinic leaders was identified.

Methods: The Infection Control/Hospital Epidemiology (IC/HE) department created a standardized checklist using guidelines from the CDC to capture the recommended areas of focus and to be utilized during walkthroughs of outpatient clinic spaces (“Guide...” pages 3-39). Areas of focus were made into checklist items and were modified to accurately capture potential gaps in practice based on clinic-specific processes and procedures, and to include common findings from prior TJC visits. Once the checklist was finalized, IC/HE collaborated with members of outpatient clinic leadership to schedule biannual walkthroughs of each clinic, allowing Infection Preventionists (IPs) to perform consistent evaluations across a total of 77 outpatient clinics.

Results: Creating a standardized checklist that captured the CDC’s recommended areas of focus in the outpatient setting allowed consistent data to be collected during each clinic walkthrough. This data was used to provide real-time feedback to clinic leaders on which areas of their clinics’ IPC practice required improvement. Furthermore, this data was valuable for showing common findings across clinics and highlighting areas that require further education and other interventions from IPs.

Conclusions: The use of a standardized checklist to collect qualitative data has helped highlight common gaps in practice which are used to determine IPC interventions. These interventions have increased evidence-based practices being followed in outpatient clinics and have therefore increased safety among patients and HCP.