News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
A regional partnership will attempt to improve nursing home care by putting more focus on facility cleaning standards.
John bell is the Cookeville Regional Charitable Foundation Director. He said elderly patients can experience gaps in care because environmental cleaning standards vary from facility to facility.
“What that really led to was a hodge-podge training criteria and implementation from nursing home to nursing home,” Bell said. “Rates of healthcare-acquired infections were somewhat sporadic and different from one facility to the next. The hope of this project is to get all nursing facilities on the same page by providing the same training and equipment.”
The Foundation will partner with the Upper Cumberland Healthcare Preparedness Coalition to offer environmental cleaning training to 21 nursing facilities. Bell said he’s excited to see how the project can impact regional healthcare as a whole.
“They’re all going to be using ATP monitors to measure their performances. That’s something that can measure the cleanliness of various surfaces within the nursing facility,” Bell said. “As a region, we will be looking at those measurements to see how each facility is doing and how we are improving as a region, so we’re excited about what this can do for reducing the number of infections that can occur in nursing facilities.”
Bell said training sessions have already begun and will continue for the next several weeks.
“As they begin to record results, we will be doing an ongoing round table discussion while we help them create best practices, but also implement those practices for the nursing facilities,” Bell said.
The Tennessee Department of Health provided funding for the project. Additional information can be found at www.uchcoalition.org.
