Strength in Numbers: Preparing as a Health System for Emerging Infections

Session Description: Emerging infectious diseases create significant challenges for infection preventionists and stress the capacity of healthcare facilities to provide safe patient care. Past experiences in the United States with COVID-19, mpox and Ebola Virus Disease illustrate the benefits of robust, multidisciplinary planning processes and the dangers of inadequate preparedness. Ongoing threats from highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1, Nipah virus infection and other emerging infectious diseases demonstrate the importance of ensuring that organizational preparedness efforts produce tangible results.

Unpredictability in occurrence and the broad operational impacts of emerging infectious diseases make sustaining preparedness a challenge. Infection preventionists bring critical subject matter expertise but frequently struggle to obtain and sustain engagement from other departments and disciplines. One way infection preventionists can overcome these challenges and build sustainable preparedness programs is through the creation of an organization-wide planning process that promotes shared ownership for this critical preparedness need.

This presentation will describe the process used by a health care system to develop an integrated, pan-organization planning structure for emerging infectious diseases. Further, it will describe how this planning structure was used to formally link strategic decision-makers for quality, occupational health, emergency management, and supply management to the infection preventionists and other patient care leaders responsible for building and maintaining operational readiness.

An infection preventionist who specializes in emergency management and occupational health will describe the rationale and process for developing the integrated planning structure. In addition, this presentation will describe the selection, implementation and maintenance of key preparedness initiatives. Examples of preparedness work developed through this planning structure include inventory management of personal protective equipment, an organizational training plan for frontline staff and the coordination of interfacility transfers of high-risk patients.