Stakeholder Meetings

The Department of Health and Human Services hosted a series of engagement meetings in Washington, D.C., Denver, Colorado, Chicago, Illinois, and Seattle, Washington during Summer and Fall 2009 to obtain feedback from community members and other stakeholders regarding:

• The potential for broad adoption of a singular national set of healthcare-associated infection reduction metrics and targets
• Considerations (needs, barriers, and potential solutions) for implementing the Action Plan and achieving the targets;
• Considerations for fostering accountability in a multi-faceted approach to reducing healthcare-associated infections; and the
• The focus and approach to a national messaging campaign aimed at reducing healthcare-associated infections. 

Meetings began with an overview of the healthcare-associated infections initiative and action plan by Dr. Don Wright, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Healthcare Quality. The chairperson of each of the Initiative’s working groups then presented briefly on their specific scope of work (see presentation below). The working group chairs’ presentation summarizes changes to the Action Plan in response to written comments. Because the purpose of the meetings was to engage the public, most of the time was dedicated to question and answer sessions and break out discussions. 

Summary reports are now available below. The HHS responses briefly summarize the reports' key findings and outline steps HHS is taking to address those concerns at the national level. The purpose of the general stakeholder meetings was to gather feedback on the HHS Action Plan to Prevent HAIs itself. The IT stakeholder meetings engaged healthcare and public health professionals in a dialogue about IT infrastructure and personnel needs for collecting, reporting, and analyzing HAI data.

General Stakeholder Meeting Information

• HHS Response to the Report on General Stakeholder Meetings
• Executive Summary of the Report
• Full Report

IT Stakeholder Information

• HHS Response to IT Stakeholder Meeting Report
• Full IT Report

HHS thanks everyone who participated in the meetings. There was excellent feedback which will further efforts to build a national coalition to prevent, reduce, and ultimately eliminate healthcare-associated infections.

Don Wright, HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Healthcare Quality (L) and Daniel Pollock, CDC Surveillance Branch Chief, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (R) lead a discussion at a Stakeholder Meeting in Seattle, Washington.