DICON personnel will assist ASCs in meeting all the requirements of the CMS mandates. We will provide ASCs with written policies and effective strategies to deal with surveillance and prevention of infections. We will train a designated person to fill the role of infection preventionist. If requested, we will develop and on-going contract with the ASC to help with all aspects of infection control including on-going education and assistance in surveillance of infections, data analysis and feedback.
The DICON program for ASCs includes the following activities:
- We will perform a comprehensive assessment of the existing infection control and prevention program at the ASC. This assessment will be based on Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) standards and elements of performance for surveillance, prevention and control of infections mandated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). These mandates require ASCs to develop and maintain effective infection prevention programs. Our review will include interviews with the staff working at the ASC and a review of policies and procedures used in the daily operations. Upon completion of our review, we will prepare a written assessment of your infection control program and your compliance with new CMS requirements. In addition, we will provide recommendations for improvements or changes in your daily operations emanating from our review.
- We will review our assessment and recommendations with the staff at the ASC and then help implement all recommendations.
- We will develop an on-going relationship with each ASC to help with all aspects of infection control including on-going education and assistance in surveillance of infections, data analysis and feedback. As part of developing this relationship, a DICON infection control nurse will make bi-monthly visits to the ASC.
- Each ASC affiliated with DICON will have easy, immediate, and convenient access to three nationally recognized physician-epidemiologists and four experienced infection control nurses.
- If an outbreak or any local infection control problem occurs, we will provide on-site assistance in resolving those issues. We can also assist in replying to questions from patients, families or physicians that relate to infection control.
- We will help you devise a system (or, alternately, we can adapt to your existing data collection system) so that rates of surgical site infections (SSI) for selected surgical procedures can be routinely calculated. These data will then be organized into reports and graphs containing risk-adjusted surgeon-specific and procedure-specific rates of post-operative SSI. We follow all current HIPAA regulations on confidentiality and we code all ambulatory center-specific information in all reports so that comparisons are blinded. Our databases are designed so that all center-specific information and patient-identifying data remain on site at the local center. De-identified data is stored in a central database allowing for the comparative and time-trended data analyses described above.