Infection Prevention and Control Resources

Helpful resources to support nursing homes with infection prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond:

Infection Prevention Assessment Tools, Resources and Trainings:

• Post COVID-19 Outbreak Guide – After a COVID-19 outbreak, what do you do? This guide tool provides step by step guidance to help your team recover and take action to improve prevention practices.
• Targeted COVID-19 Training for Nursing Homes, Quality, Safety & Education Portal (QSEP)
• National Nursing Home Training Series – Through the Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) Program, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) hosts a weekly webinar series (every Thursday, 4-5 pm ET) to provide training for infection control processes in nursing homes.
• Infection Prevention Resource List – A one-stop shop for infection prevention resources provided and updated by Telligen. 

Download and use this to guide your improvement activities:

• Guidebook for Infection Prevention and Control Preparedness – A resource to assist nursing homes with infection prevention (IP) quality improvement initiatives. The guidebook includes information, strategies, and example process measures to guide you through a PDSA cycle based on your IP assessment improvement areas.

Download and complete this tool to identify and prioritize improvement activities:

• IPC Risk Assessment – A tool to help focus improvement activities on essential tasks to reduce infection control risks. Completing an infection control risk assessment can help improve resident and staff safety, identify training opportunities, and uncover prevention practice gaps while assessing the probability of infection transmission.

Download and complete this assessment to identify improvement needs:

• Infection Prevention and Control Assessment Tool for Long Term Care (LTC) Facilities – A tool intended to assist in the assessment of infection control programs and practices.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Tools:

• When to Use Root Cause Analysis – Root cause analysis (RCA) is a problem solving method. It is a process to investigate an incident, failure, actual or potential problem or concern that indicates a need for deeper understanding of the reasons why the event occurred. However, not every incident, failure or problem will need a RCA completed. This tool will help teams determine when and for what events a thorough RCA should be completed.
• Root Cause Analysis Tool Selection Guide – Download this tool to help with selecting which RCA tool to use between Affinity Group, 5 Whys or Fishbone.
• RCA Pathway – Use this interactive step-by-step guide for completing a root cause analysis (RCA).
• Five Whys Worksheet – A root cause analysis tool (RCA) using the 5 (Five) Whys method.
• Fishbone Diagram Worksheet – A tool to walk you through a root cause analysis (RCA).
• Brainstorming, Affinity Grouping, and Multi-Voting Tool– A PDF tool that helps with using the Affinity Group method for uncovering root cause analysis (RCA) that was released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is available on the website dedicated to Quality Assurance Performance Improvement,  QAPI website.

Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) Tools:

• PDSA Guide – Plan Do Study Act, known as PDSA, is a structured improvement process. This PDSA Guide outlines the steps to navigate the method.
• PDSA Worksheet – A tool to guide you through the steps to conduct a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) process or cycle.

Process and Audit Tools:

• Performance Improvement Project (PIP) Documentation – A documentation tool to summarize PIP activities.
• Influenza and Pneumonia Immunization MDS Coding Tip Sheet – This tool is for nursing home MDS Coordinators and those who support entering the MDS data. Use this information as a quick reference in addition to your Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI) manual and Quality Measures (QM) Users Manual to accurately code influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations.
• Hand Hygiene Competency Validation – A tool to conduct observation audits of hand hygiene and track compliance.
• PPE Audit Tool – A tool to conduct observation audits of donning and doffing PPE and track compliance.
• Environmental Cleaning spreadsheet – An environmental cleaning audit tool available on the CDC website that each individual nursing home can modify and edit.
• Influenza Toolkit for Providers and Patients – This toolkit provides tools and resources to support the prevention of influenza throughout your community.
• Flu and Pneumonia Vaccine Frequently asked Questions