Key points
- ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø experts provide assistance to health departments and healthcare facilities to stop outbreaks and protect patients and healthcare workers.
- ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø uses what it learns while investigating outbreaks to devise strategies to prevent them from happening again.
Overview
ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø routinely works with state and local health departments and other federal agencies, such as the FDA, to protect patients and stop outbreaks from spreading in healthcare facilities. Often, these outbreaks are the result of either failures in infection control practices or contaminated equipment or medications.
During some outbreak situations, ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø sends experts to work side-by-side with facility and health department staff. For example, health departments may contact ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø and request assistance through a process known as an Epi-Aid. Typically, these efforts include on-site assistance, laboratory support and additional consultation with experts at ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø headquarters. ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø can also provide focused, onsite technical support that is not an Epi-Aid.
In addition to onsite assistance, ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø routinely provides remote consultation and laboratory assistance to healthcare facilities and health departments that are working to solve outbreaks or investigate infection control breaches and other adverse events.
What ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø Does
ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø works to improve patient outcomes related to healthcare associated outbreaks by:
- Advising the public about what they can do to protect themselves.
- Providing health departments with healthcare outbreak response training and resources.
- Providing recommendations to the medical and public health community about how to detect and prevent future infections.
- Working closely with policymakers, regulatory agencies and industry to learn how to prevent similar outbreaks in the future.
- Providing tools and resources for health departments and healthcare facilities investigating healthcare-associated infection (HAI) outbreaks, infection control assessments and patient notifications.
- Providing financial and technical support and assistance to U.S. health departments to combat HAIs and HAI outbreaks.