Use risk assessment to improve your infection prevention and control post-pandemic

As the public health emergency (PHE) winds down, resist the urge to return to the way you did things before the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in your outlying clinics and ambulatory care sites.

Identify the creative solutions to workflow, hand hygiene, and personal protective equipment (PPE) use that worked during the PHE and find ways to improve on them, says Kris Kilgore, RN, BSN, administrative director of Surgical Care of Michigan in Grand Rapids, which specializes in ophthalmologic procedures.

Kilgore is also a surveyor on the faculty and vice chair of the accreditation committee for the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Healthcare (AAAHC). She spoke with Inside Accreditation & Quality (IAQ) in April, and in March she taught a session on infection prevention and control (IPC) during AAAHC’s Achieving Accreditation virtual conference in March together with faculty member Karen Connolly, RN, MSN.

The pandemic has forever changed the way healthcare organizations work. “We feel as an organization some things will never go back,” Kilgore told IAQ. “We’re never going to see our waiting room jammed.”

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