Virginia Regulatory Town Hall
 
Agency
Virginia Department of Health
 
Board
State Board of Health
 
chapter
Regulations for Disease Reporting and Control [12 VAC 5 ‑ 90]
Action Expanded Requirements for Reporting Healthcare-Associated Infections
Stage Proposed
Comment Period Ended on 4/1/2011
spacer
Previous Comment     Next Comment     Back to List of Comments
4/1/11  9:54 am
Commenter: Deneen Herriott RN,BSN Infection Preventionist CJW Medical Center

Proposed Legislation
 

 It is the goal of the Infection Preventionist to improve the healthcare of the population we serve by implementing evidenced based prevention strategies to reduce infections. This requires surveillance of the infections within your facility and also includes being available to the staff members and patients we serve providing education and being a resource to assist in this effort. While public reporting may provide information regarding your hospitals rate of infection, we also would hope that it would have a positive effect in reducing hospital infection rates by using the data obtained to further prevent hospital acquired infections. Collecting and reporting data that cannot be verified as accurate will not assist in this effort, and it will also pull at the resources of the infection Preventionist with no real benefit or results. The proposed central line associated blood stream infections statement could be revised to include NICU’s to match with the CMS requirement. Remove the statement “wards selected should be those with the longest length of stay during the previous calendar year, excluding cardiology, obstetrics, psychiatry, hospice, and step-down units” in an effort to align with our current reporting requirements. As written this regulation will be difficult to compare among all hospitals reporting.   Reporting C-Difficile numbers again will not provide a direct benefit in reducing the number of cases. Better use of resources would be providing education and direction in antimicrobial management that would directly assist in reduction of C-diff cases. SCIPS is already publicly reported and would be a duplication of efforts. Finding a way to link currently reported SCIPS data to public reporting sites would be a better option.  I do not support the currently proposed legislation.  

CommentID: 16509