Independent health care: using a board-to-ward approach to achieve improvement in infection prevention standards

The Health and Social Care Act 2008 places a legal responsibility upon healthcare organisations to provide a clean environment where infection risks are minimised. From April 2010, the regulation of both the NHS and the independent healthcare sector will, for the first time, fall under the same legislative framework. Nuffield Health (NH) is an independent healthcare provider with 30 acute hospitals. Strategic management of infection prevention is led by the NH Director for Infection Prevention. Management at the hospital level is led by the matron/Director for Infection Prevention and Control supported by trained infection prevention link practitioners (IPLPs). High-quality infection prevention across a large geographical area presents many challenges and IPLPs have been used to both monitor and improve the quality of infection prevention using national audit tools and acting as role models to influence practice. Audit results over 4 years demonstrate yearly improvements and low rates of healthcare-associated infections.