OBRA 1987 regulations mandate that all long term care nursing facilities must have an Infection Control for long term care program. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, states that infections are a significant source of morbidity and mortality for long term care residents and account for up to half of all resident transfers to hospitals.

It is estimated that an average of 1.6 to 3.8 infections per resident occur annually. According to CMS, infections result in an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 hospital admissions per year at an estimated cost of $673 million to $2 billion annually. When a long term care resident is hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of infection, the death rate can reach as high as 40 percent.

This Infection Control for Long Term Care manual gives information and forms to implement a complete infection control for long term care program.

It includes the latest CMS regulations on infection control for long term care, a job description for the infection control nurse, and information on coding infections on the MDS 3.0.

Included in the forms are nursing policies and procedures and nursing inservices for training long term care staff in infection prevention practices.

The auditing and tracking forms will facilitate the task of preventing and monitoring infections in the facility.

Forms in the Infection Control Long Term Care manual comply with the change to MDS 3.0 and with all of the federal regulations and guidelines updated during the past year.

All of the forms and nursing care plans in the book are included on the CD so they can be saved to a computer whenever needed. By adding or deleting entries, the forms and care plans can be made resident specific.