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APIC, NQF moving ahead on infection rate standard

National effort expected to be done in Feb. 2007

The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology is deepening its collaboration with the National Quality Forum (NQF) in an effort to create performance measures to that can be used by health care facilities to publicly report infection information data.

As part of its ongoing collaboration with APIC, the NQF invited a total of 26 APIC members to serve on the project’s steering committee and technical advisory panels (TAPs). The project, expected to be completed in February 2007 and titled "National Voluntary Consensus Standards for the Reporting of Healthcare-Associated Infection Data," results from a national consensus conference sponsored by APIC in 2005, after which APIC and other stakeholder organizations commissioned the NQF to create standards surrounding the mandatory public reporting of infection data.

The project will address the following adult and/or pediatric population infection measures: intravascular catheters and bloodstream infections; surgically implanted devices; indwelling catheters and urinary tract infections; respiratory infections, including those associated with ventilators; gastrointestinal infections; and surgical site infections.

The steering committee will work with NQF staff on the national standards consensus development process. TAPs will provide the technical foundation for steering committee discussions. The following APIC members will serve as the consensus project’s steering committee:

Elaine Larson, RN, CIC, PhD, professor and associate dean for research, Columbia University, School of Nursing, New York City.
Tammy Lundstrom, MD, JD, senior vice president and chief quality and safety officer, Detroit Medical Center.
Jane D. Siegel, MD, professor of pediatrics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.
Michael Tapper, MD, director, division of infectious disease, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City.