Infection Control

Healthcare Associated Infections

There are 200 000 HAI in Australian health facilities each year, making HAIs the most common complication affecting patients in hospital. Most are preventable. It is estimated that two million bed days are lost to HAIs in Australia each year and that the actual costs of HAI's, in the USA, is a staggering US$ 30.5 Billion. HAIs not only cause great suffering to patients, they also damage a hospital's reputation. Prevention of healthcare associated infections and the transmission of multi-resistant organisms (MROs) are generally considered key patient safety and clinical quality initiatives.

Traditional surveillance is time-consuming and identification of cases dependent on individual effort and expertise. Pre-Bluebird ICP's spent up to 45% of their time undertaking surveillance.

Bluebird is a 21st Century Solution that will enable your hospital to effectively reduce both the reputational risk and the actual cost of infections in your hospital. From rapid diagnosis and active case management to comprehensive, systematic, standardized surveillance and real time bundle audit, Bluebird gives your hospital sophisticated tools to combat HAI's. In the Australian context, Bluebird was specifically designed to help your hospital meet, and exceed, Standard 3.

Control the Data Avalanche

Manual management of the avalanche of data that comes from labs, pharmacy, ICU, OR and the wards is not only inefficient but also inaccurate. According to a SENIC study, infection control programs such as Bluebird that include organized surveillance, control activities and a system for reporting infections, reduce hospital infection rates by 32%. Better analysis of information improves the management of infection in hospitals. Better management of infection saves lives. Automated surveillance identifies HAIs more accurately (90% v/s 76% identified manually) and reduces the time taken to identify HAI by 65%. Early detection minimizes the impact of infections. Automated surveillance frees up 50% of an ICPN (infection control and prevention nurse) time by significantly reducing, or eliminating the manual effort spent on surveillance, data entry, investigation and reporting.

Standardisation & National Reporting

Consistent naming of organisms, standard definitions of MDR etc etc are essential in order to compare hospitals nationally. When one works with multiple microbiologists at many labs, often using different laboratory information systems, standardization can be a challenge. This challenge is enhanced when one wishes to standardize selective reporting of isolate sensitivities nationally. To solve this, Bluebird hosts a single national integration hub for each country. All data streams are standardised in the Bluebird Hub before being passed on to each hospital. This has worked very well to shield individual hospitals from managing complexity. Standardising data also unlocks national MDR organism reporting.

MultiDisciplinary

Bluebird is multidisciplinary by design. ward nurses, ward managers, ward clerks, attending doctors, infectious disease professionals (nurses and physicians), clinical microbiologists and pharmacists all have specific Bluebird log ins. The success of IC and AMS programs depends on the explicit support of the hospital administration and the appropriate allocation of adequate resources which is measured and managed by Bluebird. Bluebird's design is aimed at eliciting the cooperation and engagement of prescribers rather than policing them and undermining the potential for co-operation.

Reduce Workload

Automatically entering all organisms isolated in the hospital together with their sensitivities and then directing ICP's to those patients where comprehensive assessment is required, dramatically reduces workload and helps ensure that the essential work that is done professionally.

Target Resources

Bluebird's rules engine directs the ICP to where their talents are most required and will do the most good. These rules are set for each hospital and depend on available resources. Both workload and resources are measured and paired during on-boarding.

Dashboard

Bluebird's infection control dashboard enables proactive early intervention and effective action. Cases requiring review are identified and all relevant information needed to manage that case is grouped and immediate available. Bluebird defines a Systematic Standardized Workflow which focuses infection control resources where they are able to do the most good.

Actionable Alerts

Proactive Alerts identify patients at risk for infection
Specific Organism Alerts (such as MRSA, ESBL, ESCAPE, Candidemia) - detected by laboratory testing
Outbreak alerts indicating that the prevalence of a particular bug, in a particular ward has increased above a defined target
Lab Alerts (such as abnormal renal function, abnormal WBC, ESR, CRP, PCT) - detected by the laboratory testing
Condition Alerts (e.g. wound infection, drug toxicity) - detected by clinicians
Admission Alerts (e.g., MRSA carrier, CDI re-admitted within 30 days, surgical readmissions)
Post discharge surveillance alerts. Bluebird can alert IC when active cases, have been discharged so the case can be closed if required (Unless specified by the hospital, closing of the case is not automated on discharge because post discharge surveillance might be required).
Post discharge new infection alerts. After a patient has been discharged and labs come back showing a problem, Bluebird can alert the ICP at the original hospital

Individual Case Management

Bluebird was specifically designed to improve individual patient safety. Only when attending doctors understand that an infection control program benefits their individual patient/s, can you be certain that they will support that program. An infection control program without frontline support is less likely to succeed. Cases that require active management by the ICP (Infection Control Professional) are objectively identified and become a required task in their worklist. How that work is completed is standardised to allow for objective measurement. These reports are regularly evaluated by management to ensure that available resources are being optimised in each hospital.

Contact trace

From the one index case, Bluebird automatically produces a contact list taking into account that patients movements in the hospital from admission.

Bird's Eye View

The BEV is a powerful auditing tool that summarises the monthly avalanche of infectious data. Head office ICPs can monitor and remotely manage HAI's at each hospital. Management can add queries to the local ICP's worklist and easily follow up on those queries.

Automated and Active Surveillance

All isolates are automatically surveyed using CDC's "LabIDEvents". This is an essential tool to standardise national reporting but is also extremely helpful, when compared to Active Surveillance, as an indicator of local ICP competence. Active Surveillance in this instance means active individual isolate management.

Comprehensive Infection Control