Dive Brief:
- Doctors introduced the concept of checklists to help focus fatigued and distracted healthcare workers. They now play a large role in reducing healthcare-associated infections (HAI), according to an Infection Control Today article.
- Central line bloodstream infection rates have fallen 44% since 2008 and surgical site infections dropped more than 20%, thanks in part to hospitals using checklists, the article says.
- To continually improve HAI prevention, the article suggests that all care team members be open to communicating concerns and suggestions, but go beyond checklists for HAI prevention.
Dive Insight:
Increasingly, reimbursement for HAIs is tied to government and third-party payers, making it particularly important to focus on checklists that prevent infections. Testing and implementing new checklists should involve controlled trials, according to the article. Designing checklists that improve on this generation of tools can only be done if the new checklists are rigorously tested, according to the journal article. But despite the work involved, it's worth doing.