This evaluation of HHS' Healthcare Associated Infections National Action Plan will assess the efficacy, efficiency and coordination of federal efforts to mitigate and prevent Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs). As such, the evaluation represents a critical component of AHRQ's mission to promote health care quality improvement.
HAIs are infections that patients acquire while receiving treatment for other conditions while in a healthcare setting. They affect care in hospitals-hereafter referred to as "acute care", ambulatory care settings, and long-term care facilities, and represent a significant cause of illness and death in the United States. Over one million HAIs occur across health care settings every year.
In 2008, amidst growing demands on the healthcare system, rising healthcare costs, and increasing concerns about antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, HHS established a senior-level Steering Committee for the Prevention of HAIs. Charged with improving coordination and maximizing the efficiency of prevention efforts across HHS, the Steering Committee released the first "National Action Plan to Prevent Health Care-Associated Infections" (HAI NAP) in 2009. This plan outlined a systematic and phased approach to reducing HAIs and associated morbidity, mortality, and costs. Phase One of HAI NAP, which concluded in 2012, focused on HAI prevention in acute care hospitals, where data on prevention and the capacity to measure improvement were most complete. Additionally, the plan set specific targets for reducing rates of six high priority HAIs or specific causative organisms: surgical site infection (SSI), central-line associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI), ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI), Clostridium difficile infection, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection (MRSA).
Phase II of the Action Plan, entitled National Action Plan to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections: Roadmap to Elimination was released in April 2012. Phase II expanded the Action Plan to include prevention of HAIs in ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) facilities, and increasing influenza vaccination coverage of healthcare personnel. Phase III of the HAI NAP, released for public comment in April 2013, further expanded the Action Plan to include prevention of HAIs in long-term care facilities.
Evaluation of HAI NAP. In 2009, AHRQ funded an independent, outside evaluation of HHS' HAI prevention efforts, as guided by the Action Plan. The goals of this evaluation were to: (1) record the content and scope of the Action Plan, its current design, its progress, and impact on the future; (2) establish baseline data and provide additional information on the HAI landscape prior to and following the initiation of the Action Plan effort; and (3) provide strategic insights from ongoing processes for reducing HAIs and outcomes of these processes.
The current evaluation will expand upon this initial effort, encompassing the additional health care settings outlined in Phases II and III of the HAI NAP.
The goals of this Phase II evaluation are to:
1. identify commonalities, gaps, themes, and opportunities for collaboration across six Federal quality improvement and patient safety efforts to eliminate HAIs; and
2. highlight actionable opportunities across HHS to collaborate and efficiently utilize resources in these quality improvement and patient safety efforts; and
3. assess the unique and aggregate contributions of each quality improvement and patient safety effort to the mitigation and prevention of HAIs.
US Code:
42 USC 299
Name of Law: Healthcare and Quality Act of 1999
Submission of a new ICR for OMB review and approval.
$697,400
No
No
No
No
No
Uncollected
Doris Lefkowitz 3014271477
Reginfo record details
No
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Form 2 Attachment B: Interview Protocol for Ambulatory Surgical Centers
HAI NAP Supporting Statement Part A FINANovemberL.doc
Attachment H HAI NAP Recruitment Letter from AHRQ.docx
Attachment D: Interview Protocol for Long Term Care Settings