Infection Prevention

Skilled Nursing News had an interesting conversation with Dr. Buffy Lloyd-Krejci. She started an infection control consulting firm, IPCWell to help nursing homes with infection prevention and control. CMS mandates that every nursing home implement an infection control program.

However, nursing homes had problems with training, compliance, and inadequate staffing. Lloyd-Krejci worked in nursing homes all over the country throughout the course of the pandemic.  They weren’t ready because it wasn’t a priority. Until COVID.

She made some excellent points but seems overly protective of her clients.

She said:

That’s over 1,000 people dying every day in nursing homes due to infections. So this was quite eye-opening for me, having a background in acute care and also in research. I wasn’t as familiar with this problem in nursing homes, that it wasn’t as well understood. I was happy if they would wash their hands basically, at that point, versus having them actually collect data.

One of the problems she found was that caregivers were not responsible for infection control. Rather, it was the environmental services and housekeeping employees. Training was poor and sporadic.

“Our loved ones don’t have to die from an infection that we give them in a health care facility. For years, even in hospitals, we thought that was normal, and it’s not. And we’ve been able to demonstrate over the last decade, with quality improvement projects that we can proactively reduce these infections and save lives.”