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press@qualityforum.orgNQF Releases Playbook to Help Hospitals Tackle Hospital-Onset Bloodstream Infections
New Hospital-Onset Bacteremia and Fungemia (HOB) Playbook comes as CDC advances a new quality measure addressing HOB
Washington, DC – The National Quality Forum (NQF) has released its Hospital-Onset Bacteremia and Fungemia Playbook, a new, publicly available guide to help organizational leaders and clinical care teams in acute care settings implement or improve hospital-onset bacteremia and fungemia (HOB) prevention, identification, and treatment initiatives. The release of the HOB Playbook comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is taking steps to address HOB by refining a recently endorsed quality measure.
HOB refers to a category of healthcare-associated infections (HAI), which are infections that patients acquire while being treated in an acute care setting. HAIs result in more than 70,000 deaths and $28 billion in direct medical costs every year and can severely damage patients’ trust in their clinical care teams and exacerbate clinician burnout. HOB is any bloodstream infection where bacterial or fungal pathogens are detected from a blood culture specimen collected on day four or later of hospital admission.
NQF developed the new publication to enhance current infection prevention and control (IPC) practices; provide healthcare organizations with practical guidance for developing highly effective HOB prevention programs that leverage current and new infrastructures to support sustainability of results; and offer helpful resources for clinical care teams to effectively identify and treat pathogens when HOB does occur.
“Reducing preventable infections remains a critical priority for improving healthcare quality and patient safety,” said Dana Gelb Safran, ScD, President & CEO, NQF. “Infection prevention efforts have typically focused on procedure- or device-related infections, using procedure- or device-related measures to track infection rates. CDC’s introduction of a new quality measure broadens the lens to encompass hospital-onset bacteremia and fungemia and will help healthcare organizations address a wider range of infections.”
The Hospital-Onset Bacteremia and Fungemia Playbook helps organizations build on their existing HAI programs, and quality and patient safety initiatives, to address HOB prevention, identification, and treatment. Drawing from decades of IPC research, it presents considerations and best practices so that organizations have options that can be tailored to their specific needs. NQF will host a webinar on the HOB Playbook on October 31, 2024 at 3:00 pm ET. The HOB Playbook was made possible by funding from Becton Dickinson (BD).
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About National Quality Forum
The National Quality Forum (NQF) is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan, membership-based organization that works to improve healthcare outcomes, safety, equity, and affordability. Our unique role is to bring all voices to our table to forge multistakeholder consensus on quality measurement and improvement standards and practices that achieve measurable health improvements for all. NQF is a proud affiliate of The Joint Commission. Learn more at www.qualityforum.org.