Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes

Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes

Deciding what you want to change is the first step of the quality improvement cycle. These goal descriptions provide general information about the goal and its benefits to share with your team.

Let the Quality Improvement Cycle be your Guide…

Click through the tabs to view resources for each goal. The tabs represent each step of the quality improvement cycle.

Getting Started provides an overview of the complete quality improvement cycle.

View the training webinar and access the handouts here

Nursing home residents are at increased risk of infections for many reasons. As more people enter nursing homes following hospital stays, nursing homes are providing more hands-on, complex medical care to residents, such as wound care and maintenance of indwelling devices, which can lead to increased exposure to bacteria and infection. The shared living environment of a nursing home can allow the spread of easily transmissible viral infections which cause respiratory or gastrointestinal infections among both staff and residents.

Gastrointestinal infections from Clostridium difficile (C. diff) are a major problem in US healthcare facilities. Although at one time most of these infections occurred in hospitals, now over 75% of C. diff infections are first identified outside of the hospital setting. Nursing homes are among the most common places where C. diff infections can happen.

Although reducing C. diff infections occurring among residents in a nursing home has been selected as the first focus area for performance improvement within the infection prevention goal, working on this goal will allow a nursing home to implement strategies which also reduce spread of other infections.

How does preventing and reducing C. diff benefit residents?

How does preventing and reducing C. diff benefit staff?

How does preventing and reducing C. diff benefit nursing homes?