Like any organization caring for older adults, we quickly learned
that compromised health due to COVID did not go away when the pandemic ended. COVID continues to impact residents with chronic health issues. Due to the complexity of these issues, our nurses must utilize their expert clinical assessment skills and nurs- ing judgment to coordinate the care of our residents with their families and health provider team.
LAURA SYPNIEWSKI Regional Director Clinical Services
Discovery Senior Living
What is new and exciting in infection prevention and control for your company? Keeping infection control and pre- vention “new and exciting” might be the biggest challenge! Often the focus on control and prevention fades to the background as an acute episode or outbreak ends. Every- one wanted back to “normal” dur- ing the height of
pandemic — residents, families and staff. At DSL keeping infec- tion monitoring and management “new” is a major focus. We do this with ongoing and standardized
education across all of our communities and recognition of com- munities that manage low occurrences and transmission rates. We don’t stop the focus for prevention with just our team members — we include residents and families, and our healthcare provider partners. Prevention is key; we can only prevent an outbreak (of any infec-
tion) by minimizing exposure to our residents. We provide ongoing family education via live education and newsletters. Incorporate education for our residents through our Celebrations (activities) programs – everything from hand hygiene basics to education on immunizations. We work with our partners in home care and hospice – that means including them to help us educate residents, families and team members. But even more importantly it means reducing risk of exposure from them when they come to our com- munities. We work with those partners to provide consistent team members to visit the community – it reduces risk to have one or two homecare nurses/therapists/aides coming to the community vs. having 10-15 from a wide variety of partner providers. We also work on strong partnerships with home care providers and MD practices to keep residents home whenever possible. The greatest opportunity for exposure to any contagion is going to the emergency room or even urgent care. We provide physician visits in the communities, and opportunities for therapy services (Part A and Part B) in the community. We have drastically reduced exposure by eliminating agency use in most of our communities. As a company and as individual communities, we monitor local hospital infection levels/trends and work closely with local health departments to reduce risk.
What are the keys to running an effective IPC program? The keys to an effective IPC program are simple: » Assessing and minimizing risk and exposure. » Teaching staff, residents, families and our partners in homecare, therapy and hospice fundamentals of prevention. And when prevention isn’t possible, the key is quick response to contain and treat.
» Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning! Enhanced education for our housekeeping team and use of standardized high quality/highly effective cleaning solutions is key. Teaching and monitoring compliance with “dwell time” for routine cleaning, especially in common areas, is key.
the COVID-19
» Containment and response – quick response to any POTEN- TIAL outbreak minimizes the risk of spread. The keys to con- tainment and response are the education outlined above and communication. If the team and residents/families/partners don’t know there is an outbreak or potential outbreak, then containment isn’t possible. As a company, we use a commu- nication platform to rapidly reach families (Call-Em-All) and communicate with our teams via our scheduling software that allows us to text updates to all team members.
» Maintaining adequate PPE at all communities. During the COVID outbreak DSL communities were never without the needed PPE – the only reason that was possible was early action by our CEO Richard Hutchinson. Richard’s leadership and vision allowed purchasing partnerships to be leveraged early. Cost wasn’t the focus, prevention was. Our entire home office support team worked relationships and partnerships to get what was needed for PPE. Stephanie Morton oversees our relation- ship with DSSI for procurement. That historic and strong relationship made procurement possible during times that had unprecedented shortages. PPE was stored in key locations across the country to be able to distribute quickly when an outbreak occurred. Communities have now become accustomed to keep- ing (and rotating) stocks of PPE in the communities so rapid response is possible to potential and actual outbreaks. Yes, there is a financial cost, but the benefit of outbreak reduction drasti- cally outweighs the cost.
What lessons did you learn from COVID? » That education and empowerment of the communities (staff, residents, families and partners in home care and hospice) is key to successful prevention and management. Using technology to rapidly and consistently communicate is a huge advantage.
» That early action to implement containment IS a part of pre- vention. Keeping partner relationships strong allows resource availability of PPE and cleaning supplies.
» That vision, forethought and leadership allows rapid response. Communication and partnership with local health departments, hospitals and providers allows us to lower resident exposure.
» That information is key … Our Business Intelligence Division at a corporate level tracked cases/recovery/outbreak status on a daily basis with every community (IL/AL/MC). Tracking allowed for prevention and containment measures to be rapidly deployed.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2023
ARGENTUM.ORG 11
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