Thread by @SaskiaPopescu

There’s a particular irony in people emphasizing the role of hospital preparedness right now. Comments about HPP funding and such are important, yes, but what we really need to address is how hospitals invest in biopreparedness. (1/x)

Primarily, hospital preparedness for infectious diseases is led by infection prevention/epidemiology (we saw this w/Ebola and it took up like 80%+ of our daily activities). The issue though is that these programs are woefully understaff & bioprep is not a major priority (2/x)

IPC efforts are mostly focused on HAIs for a myriad of reasons (mandated reporting, financial penalties, etc.) and that’s often a result of hospital leadership priorities and focus that drives IPC programs (3/x)

In fact, an @OIGatHHS report found that hospital leaders don’t necessarily prioritize costly biopreparedness (for Ebola, etc.) when as there are a lot of other competing issues. Also, 1/3 didn’t know where they fell on the tiered hospital program. (4/x)

Also, this report noted that typically, hospital emergency prep efforts didn’t have the expertise needed (i.e IPC) for something like Ebola. So, as @APIC has found, we have under-staff IPC programs that spending most of their time on HAI surveillance and reporting (5/x)

Which leaves very little time for any infectious disease preparedness unless you’re lucky enough to have a hospital administrator who seriously values that and is willing to spend the $$ (6/x)

SO - it's important to note that while we talk about #2019nC0V prep in hospitals & infection control efforts, we don’t discount the role of infection preventionists…bc we’re the one doing most of it - making sure staff are trained, supplies are good, ... (7/x)

IPs are the ones on call so when a r/o patient comes in, we review @CDCgov PUI guidance and act as a conduit to avoid inundating local public health. We provide guidance to ensure staff and patient safety. (8/x)

We can’t talk about hospital preparedness & infection control w/out discussing the role of IPs and the limitations they get to invest in such efforts due to heavy focus on financially-linked HAIs and reporting. (9/x)

So please, consider how IPC gets “strengthened” in hospitals & that when we talk about building readiness through HCWs, that also includes the IPs who work tirelessly to protect their staff/patients/visitors, but often don’t get the support do to so outside of emergencies. (10/x)

And wash your hands..(Steps down from waving dissertation)