Projects

Project Overview

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) instituted the National Action Plan to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) as a systematic effort to reduce HAIs and associated morbidity, mortality, and costs. Under this contract, Insight expanded on an iterative longitudinal evaluation of the plan, which included quality improvement activities and evaluations conducted by individual operational divisions in agencies across HHS.

The goal of the project was to identify commonalities, gaps, themes, and opportunities for collaboration across 10 sets of quality improvement efforts highlighting opportunities across HHS to collaborate and employ resources efficiently in the Federal effort to eliminate HAIs.

To conduct this study, Insight—

• Described all the quality improvement initiatives, including the environmental factors that gave rise to each and their interrelationships
• Identified the progress of the HAI NAP initiatives, their interrelationships with the National Action Plan, and the unique and overall contributions of each to the mitigation and prevention of HAIs
• Documented projects and activities of all quality improvement efforts, including an annotated bibliography and interviews with stakeholders
• Conducted a product analysis to characterize HHS agencies’ HAI-related programs and projects
• Inventoried data systems, profiling all HHS data systems capable of HAI surveillance
• Developed an inventory of HHS HAI-related patient safety practices and adoption metrics
• Reported findings quarterly to the Federal Action Workgroup and annually to the Assistant Secretary for Health for HHS

Products

Annual reports (2014, 2015, 2016) synthesized findings and discussed the effects of each quality improvement initiative and the effects of all HAI NAP activities