EP 06 - Management of sars-cov-2 Positive Patients in a Behavioral Health Unit

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

1:41 PM – 2:00 PM

Location: W103 A/B; Orange County Convention Center

CE: 0.33

CNE Credits: 0.33
CME Credits: 0.33

Presenter(s)

Marissa Broadley, MPH, MSEd, RN, CIC, CPHQ, CPPS, LSSGBH (she/her/hers)

Director, Infection Prevention
Albany Med Health System - Saratoga Hospital
Saratoga Springs, New York

Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose

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Co-Author(s)

Jacqueline Cordell, MS, MT(ASCP)SM, CIC

Infection Prevention Practitioner
Albany Med Health System - Glens Falls Hospital
Glens Falls, New York

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NH

Nancy Harrison, BSN, RN (she/her/hers)

Infection Preventionist
Albany Med Health System - Saratoga Hospital
Saratoga Springs, New York
Celena Yourdon, MSN, RN, PMH-BC (she/her/hers)

Clinical Nurse Manager, Saratoga Hospital Inpatient Mental Health Unit
Albany Med System - Saratoga Hospital
Saratoga Springs , New York
Deidre Cirillo, RN (she/her/hers)

Director of Medical Staff Affairs and Organizational Regulatory Readiness
Albany Med Health System - Saratoga Hospital
Saratoga Springs, New York

Moderator(s)

Luz Caicedo, MPH, CPH, CIC, CRCST, VA-BC

Infection Prevention Manager
AdventHealth Celebration, Florida

Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose

Co-Moderator(s)

Krista Doline, BS, MLS (ASCP), CIC, FAPIC

Infection Preventionist
Piedmont Healthcare
Fayetteville, Georgia

Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose

Background: The SARs-COV-2 pandemic created a great number of challenges in the field of healthcare. While most patient care units occasionally experience obstacles assuring patient safety, behavioral health units present their own unique challenges when managing patients and communicable diseases. During increased patient volumes, hospital clinicians may need to find a way to safely admit SARS-CoV-2 positive patients to the behavioral health unit (BHU). In order to admit these patients, it is essential to create a risk assessment to mitigate the numerous risk factors involved.

Methods: An interdisciplinary team was selected to build a risk assessment tool to manage SARs-CoV-2 positive patients who were being admitted to the BHU. The ability to transfer a SARS-CoV-2 positive behavioral health patient to the BHU was based upon crucial decisions made by the team. These decisions included determining acceptable alternatives to personal protective equipment (PPE) in an effort to prevent ligature risks, assuring proper patient placement, assembling the clinical picture of the patient, and assessing the cycle time value of the patient's polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.

Results: Ten SARs-CoV-2 positive cases were admitted to the BHU over nineteen months, there were no associated healthcare-associated cases of SARs-CoV-2 related to these BHU admissions.

Conclusions: Initially, BHU staff were reluctant to care for SARs-CoV-2 infected patients, as the use of PPE within the BHU is limited. As a result, an algorithm was created during the risk assessment, which would restrict infectious SARs-CoV-2 patients to a medical/surgical floor. The algorithm used eliminated highly infectious SARs-CoV-2 patients’ admission to the behavioral health unit and was likely the largest contributing factor to success of this facility in preventing the spread of the virus among this patient population while safely providing appropriate behavioral health services.

Learning Objectives:

Use a risk assessment tool to mitigate infection prevention risk factors.
Describe ways to reduce infection risk in a behavioral health unit as it pertains to SARs-CoV-2.
Open channels of communication between multiple departments to ensure staff and patient safety.