Recommendations for healthcare

Letter to infection control

Healthcare organizations should immediately implement a number of strategies that are both ethical to help prevent disease spread among staff, patients, and the community and are fiscally advisable to reduce hospital costs in the long run.

• Stockpile N95s.
• Purchase more PAPRs.
• Review shortages during prior surges with pharmacy and materials management and increase stock appropriately. There is currently a shortage of BD BACTEC Blood Culture Systems. Most generic medications used in the US begin as APIs in China, are shipped to India for manufacturing and packaging, and then travel to the US in the cargo holds of passenger flights. There are many points of failure along these supply chains, including government decisions NOT to export to protect their own populations.
• Mandate respiratory protection during pandemics and the normal cold/flu season. This is where I expect to see Standard Precautions going in the future.

There really are just two choices. Implement measures to protect staff, patients, and the public and perhaps delay the most severe impacts on healthcare organizations or continue as we are acting as if everything is normal and expedite their failure. Temporal discounting is our Achille’s heel.