Nearly a year after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it would be collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to develop an infection prevention and control course for nursing home staff, the online training is now available. In a new QSO memo, CMS provides an overview of the new course, “Nursing Home Infection Preventionist Training Course” which is located on the CDC’s website. The course is approximately 19 hours of CE credits and if learners complete all the modules and pass a post-course exam, they will be issued a certificate of completion. The memo states that the course content is not regulatory, but instead provides information on infection prevention and control best practices, and as such, does not guarantee compliance with IPCP regulatory requirements. However, it does cover these topics:
- IPCP overview
- Infection Preventionist (IP) responsibilities
- QAPI integration
- Infection surveillance
- Outbreaks
- Standard precautions principles
- Transmission-based precautions principles
- Hand hygiene
- Respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette
- Management of devices and wounds
- Point-of-care blood testing
- Reprocessing reusable resident care equipment
- Environmental cleaning
- Water management programs
- Linen management
- Preventing respiratory infections
- TB prevention
- Occupational health considerations
- Antibiotic stewardship
- Care transitions
The CMS QSO Memo from March 11, 2019, “Specialized Infection Prevention and Control Training for Nursing Home Staff in the Long-Term Care Setting is Now Available” (Ref: QSO-19-10-NH) supersedes the March 16, 2018 QSO Memo, “Specialized Infection Prevention and Control Training for Nursing Home Staff in the Long Term Care Setting” (Ref: QSO-18-15-NH). The link to the training on the CDC TRAIN website can be found here.
Do you have Infection Prevention and Control concerns in your facility? CMS Compliance Group’s clinical and environmental consultants can assist. Contact us to learn more about our nursing facility consulting services.