5 Steps to Optimize Your Infection Control Program for Maximum Impact

Written by Carole W. Kamangu

Creating and maintaining a fully compliant and robust infection prevention and control (IPC) program is a major achievement that not only takes time but also requires multiple resources. In many cases, as an IPC program leader, you may face barriers such as limited resources and minimal support as your team continues to be required to do more with less while dealing with the never-ending spiral of educating and justifying the importance of infection prevention.  

Since the challenges are numerous, IPC teams can lose focus and experience burnout when dealing with multiple priorities at once. This may lead to inefficiencies, increased costs, increased rates of nonadherence with guidelines and regulations among staff, and increased risks for healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) within the healthcare setting.

One way for your IPC team to lighten the load and achieve realistic goals is to optimize your program by ensuring that all available resources are utilized efficiently. This will help strengthen the overall state of your program and increase adherence to regulatory requirements and evidence-based practice. 

Steps to Streamline Your Program and Optimize Your Current Resources 

1. Conduct A Program Assessment and Gap Analysis 

The first step to take to identify gaps and problems within your program is to assess the situation. By conducting an initial assessment, you can identify your program’s strengths and weaknesses and easily make a remediation plan. This can be achieved by using various assessment tools available to infection preventionists. After the initial assessment, it’s important to re-evaluate your program regularly to address areas of noncompliance and inefficiency. This will allow you to fine-tune your interventions and help your facility achieve compliance levels that align with your objectives, best practices, and regulatory requirements.  

2. Prioritize Interventions Based on Risk  

When you have completed the assessment, the next crucial step is to categorize those identified issues by their risk level. This will help you prioritize your highest-risk areas and allow you to streamline and focus your interventions. It also helps you align your program objectives with those priority areas. For example, when conducting your annual risk assessment, you’re able to identify your facility’s risks and prioritize your activities based on those risk levels. 

To learn how to prioritize risk levels during the risk assessment process and plan your interventions accordingly, access our free annual infection prevention risk assessment course. An assessment tool is available for practice.

 3. Observe and Streamline Established Procedures 

Streamlining offers an opportunity to reduce stress, identify priorities, and categorize them by urgency and risk levels. At this stage, you’ll need to zero in on your affected departments by analyzing each area of concern, your established procedures, and segments of your patient or client population that will negatively be impacted by those gaps. One example would involve assessing your cleaning and disinfection processes to ensure that the environmental services (EVS) team’s policies align with best practice, and that cleaning and disinfectant products meet the appropriate requirements.

Your IPC team would visit the EVS department to observe practices and discuss with them. This process is referred to as the Gemba walk, which means going to the place where the work is done to understand their processes. This would involve engaging the EVS team by speaking with their leadership and staff members to truly understand how they work while observing them in action.

Observing and communicating with frontline staff would allow you to understand what their work entails and what challenges affect their performance and adherence to established policies and procedures. Tackling the problem at the source would help mitigate potential risks to your patient population such as preventing the transmission of infections within the healthcare setting.   

 4. Implement Utilization Controls 

At this stage, your focus should be on preventing overuse or misuse of the limited resources available, ensuring the appropriate use of those resources, and initiating a monitoring system for compliance.  

In our EVS department example, based on your findings, some tactics for improving compliance and optimizing EVS procedures may include educating EVS leadership and staff on best practices, reducing waste by managing the cleaning and disinfectant product inventory more appropriately, and adopting tools such as checklists or job aids to monitor processes and to collect data for monitoring for improvements.  By putting such a system in place, you will ensure that risks are minimized, that your EVS team remains engaged with IPC procedures, and that your program remains compliant with established standards.

5. Promote Continuous Monitoring & Improvements 

Once you have conducted your assessment and gathered data, you now have a basic understanding of your programmatic challenges. You can conduct additional research by consulting credible resources that will aid in solidifying your ideas and make inferences that will drive your subsequent interventions. At this stage, you should regularly assess your interventions and collaborate with stakeholders on the frontline to help you identify ongoing challenges that may be affecting their adherence to best practices.  

Based on our previous example, this stage should involve establishing a schedule for observing environmental cleaning and disinfecting procedures, discussing barriers to improvement, and celebrating their successes throughout the year. Ongoing interactions with frontline staff will increase collaboration with the IPC team, establish a mutually trusting relationship, and promote a continuous improvement mindset.  

By taking these steps, you will make some progress towards optimizing your IPC program, reducing unnecessary workload for staff, reducing risks for your patients and staff, and achieving compliance with evidence-based practice and regulatory guidelines.  

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Do you need an IPC program revamp? Do you need a fresh perspective on your program’s effectiveness? Contact us for assistance today! 

Why partner with us?

Our goal is to help you optimize your program, create a safer environment, and achieve your targeted cost savings. Our team of experts has a proven track record of assisting healthcare facilities in reducing workloads, improving best practices, and saving on healthcare costs. Accessing our expertise gives you the advantage of over 30 years of experience, leading to quicker problem-solving. Explore our proven success stories.