Recognizing the Value of Infection Control in Addressing the AMR Crisis

One of the challenges that all infection control and QI programs face is obtaining the necessary funding to complete all their required activities such as surveillance, reporting and prevention. Anthony Harris from the University of Maryland spent a great deal of time (e.g. SHEA White Paper on Necessary Infrastructure) as SHEA President pushing for increased resources for hospital epi activities. In a recent BMJ Quality and Safety editorial, Anthony offered suggestions for advancing the recognition and resources for infection control and QI activities, including societies (i.e. SHEA, APIC, ESCMID) partnering with governments to create comprehensive recommendations for infection control programs and funding.

Specifically, he recommends:

(a) guidelines by major organisations outlining the optimal reimbursement and full time employee (FTE) of hospital epidemiologists and infection preventionists for healthcare facilities in various settings. Currently, agencies such as CMS list certain conditions of participation for institutions relative to infection control and soon to be antibiotic stewardship; however, details of these requirements are vague and should be expanded

(b) as reimbursement moves away from fee per service and more towards quality outcomes driving reimbursement and penalties, we need more effective and novel methods of directing resources for day-to-day infection prevention. For example, an infection prevention fee could be imposed on all procedures that require significant infection prevention resources such as surgery or central line insertion and maintenance

(c) funding for state health departments to assist individual hospitals in establishing effective infection prevention programmes

(d) novel reimbursement models such as a fixed fee per surveillance culture reviewed, a fee for each chart reviewed to assess the appropriateness of antibiotic selection or an hourly fee for performing outbreak investigation may be warranted

(e) certification requirements for hospital epidemiology and QI experts that will help recruit and establish more experts to the field.

The full editorial (free full text access) is well worth reading. (COI alert: I'm a co-author)