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Review
. 2016 Apr;37(4):371-80.
doi: 10.1017/ice.2015.333. Epub 2016 Feb 1.

Necessary Infrastructure of Infection Prevention and Healthcare Epidemiology Programs: A Review

Kristina A Bryant  1 , Anthony D Harris  2 , Carolyn V Gould  3 , Eve Humphreys  4 , Tammy Lundstrom  5 , Denise M Murphy  6 , Russell Olmsted  7 , Shannon Oriola  8 , Danielle Zerr  9
Affiliations
Review

Necessary Infrastructure of Infection Prevention and Healthcare Epidemiology Programs: A Review

Kristina A Bryant et al. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2016 Apr.

Abstract

The scope of a healthcare institution's infection prevention and control/healthcare epidemiology program (IPC/HE) should be driven by the size and complexity of the patient population served, that population's risk for healthcare-associated infection (HAI), and local, state, and national regulatory and accreditation requirements. Essential activities of all IPC/HE programs include but are not limited to the following: ∙ Surveillance.∙ Performance improvement to reduce HAI ∙ Acute event response, including outbreak investigation ∙ Education and training of both healthcare personnel and patients ∙ Reporting of HAI to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Healthcare Safety Network as well as entities required by law.

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Conflict of interest statement

Potential conflicts of interest. All authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.

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