A Better Future

A Better Future IPCWell is advocating to improve patient outcomes in nursing facilities

BY KAMALA KIRK

Since the COVID-19 crisis, approximately one-third of all coronavirus-related deaths in the United States have been nursing home residents or workers.

But even prior to the pandemic—for decades—nursing homes were severely lagging in infection-prevention standards. After working in hospital and health care settings for more than 20 years, Buff y Lloyd-Krejci founded IPCWell in 2017 to advocate for a better future for nursing homes and to reduce the rate of infections.

“This is my platform and mission,” she says.

“What the public doesn’t realize is that before the pandemic, approximately 1,000 nursing home residents were dying every day as a result of serious infections, such as pneumonia and UTIs. Nursing facilities have become coronavirus hotspots due to their density and close proximity between residents and workers. The biggest challenge is when workers go into the community and then return to the facility, bringing the virus in. Nursing homes also don’t have the supplies they need to care for these types of sicknesses. It sets up an impossible situation.”

While working with more than 500 nursing homes in four states for a national pilot study in 2016 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Lloyd-Krejci discovered the infection-control practices in nursing homes were nearly nonexistent. This inspired her to start IPCWell to provide much-needed resources and support to these facilities.

“Since 2011, hospitals have been required to report their infections,” Lloyd-Krejci points out. “But there’s no federal mandate for nursing homes, so these infections go unreported. Just recently, the CDC and CMS started requiring nursing facilities to report COVID-19 infections, which is a step in the right direction. It is my hope that after the pandemic ends, these places will continue to make infection tracking and control a priority. Without proper tracking, measuring and reporting, we will not know the true extent of infections and how to solve the problem. A lot of these infections can be www.LovinLife.com

IPCWell visits diff erent health care setlaunched a new advocacy group to suptings and nursing facilities to conduct an port health care settings that anyone can assessment of the infection control prosign up to join—even those not working grams that are in place, examining everyin health care. thing from the food and environmental “I’m passionate about helping and services to hand hygiene. It helps bridge supporting those that don’t always have the gap and create solutions for beta voice,” she says. “I want to prevent unter infection-control practices, working necessary harm and death by creating with the facilities over time to train their change in this industry that will help supstaff , develop and implement policies as port our vulnerable patients and health well as antibiotic stewardship. Its clients care workers.” include nursing homes, critical access For more information, visit ipcwell. hospitals, acute surgical centers for outcom. patients, and small hospitals in rural areas that lack resources.

“The places we work with tell us all the time that spending a day with us is like having a year’s worth of training,” Lloyd-Krejci shares.

The Hospital Improvement Innovation Network (HIIN) has created measures that successfully reduce the number of infections in hospitals—and Lloyd-Krejci wants the same for nursing homes and other health care settings.

“A lot of these infections can be prevented if they implement good practices such a hand hygiene, environmental Get your copy today! cleaning and strong antibiotic steward

ship programs,” she says. “Once they begin to track infections, we’ll be able to monitor and see them go down based on the implementation of these practices. Because hospitals report their public data, they’re forced to work on these issues in order to maintain a good reputation. As consumers, we make decisions based on how many infections a nursing home has—no one wants to go to a facility with a high infection rate.”

During COVID-19, IPCWell continues to off er support for clients and holds weekly calls for the nursing homes and critical access hospitals with which it works. In addition, it hosts free monthly national webinars that cover various infection-control topics Buff y Lloyd-Krejci founded IPCWell in 2017 to advocate for a better and has started off ering weekfuture for nursing homes and to reduce the rate of infections. (Photo courtesy Buff y Lloyd-Krejci) ly “Offi ce Hours” on Thursdays where it answers questions and prevented if better practices are impleprovides guidance for coronavirus-relatmented.” ed challenges and solutions. It has also

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