Fostering Collaboration Between Infection Prevention and Environmental Services

Kathy Roye-Horn, RN, CIC, is putting into action her beliefs about the importance of collaboration between infection control professionals (ICPs) and environmental services professionals (ESPs). In June, she spoke in Denver before the membership of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), and this month, she will find herself in San Antonio addressing members of the American Society for Healthcare Environmental Services (ASHES). It’s two different cities, but the critical message — fostering teamwork between ICPs and ESPs for the sake of fighting healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) — remains the same.

Roye-Horn, director of infection control services at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, N.J., advocates for a comprehensive infection prevention and control plan that can be implemented collaboratively between the two departments as they align departmental and organizational quality improvement goals. This collaboration is essential especially in an era of increased federal scrutiny by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services (CMS) and new pay-for-performance mandates set to go into effect next month, in addition to continued expectations of meeting other agency regulations, standards, and guidelines.

One such piece of guidance is the Guidelines for Environmental Infection Control in Health-Care Facilities: Recommendations of CDC/HICPAC, which was issued in 2003 and outlines pertinent sanitation and infection prevention strategies relating to the physical environment in healthcare facilities. The role of the environment in the transmission of pathogenic organisms is a contested topic; while some studies indicate microbial contamination of environmental surfaces contributes to disease transmission, some healthcare professionals point to the CDC’s statement in the guideline that, “The environment is rarely implicated in patient infections.”