CAHO and 3M India Launch Awareness and Compliance Excellence Program

Amid the second wave of covid-19 and the looming threat of the third, it has become imperative for healthcare facilities to achieve zero infections. The central sterile supply service (CSSD) is one of the critical avenues that help healthcare facilities achieve this goal. The CSSD is an internal service within a hospital which is responsible for the supply of clean and sterile instruments used within the hospital for various procedures.

CAHO will aim to increase the competence of CSSD facilities in hospitals in India. The challenge is enormous, given that the team / technicians here have not gone through a structured training program designed around this department and therefore it is difficult for them to fill the gaps in adherence to the protocol.

“ACE is a well-defined quality improvement program and addresses the improvement of the CSSD process in healthcare facilities as well as the learning requirements of CSSD teams. The overall objective of the program is to raise awareness among the CSSD team to the gaps in the current process and people’s knowledge of the process and fill the gap. The timing of the launch is right. Our country is in the midst of the second wave of the pandemic and the entire health sector is very aware and willing to take concrete action to prevent infections, ”Rajiv Gupta, Country Business Leader – said healthcare business group 3M India on the launch of ACE.

ACE is a one-year program that has several phases of engagement with participating hospitals. The awareness phase aims to educate CSSD teams on standards and help them adopt best practices in accordance with international sterilization guidelines. The second phase, compliance, is when CAHO auditors visit participating hospitals and perform audits to suggest gaps that could be filled to improve the efficiency of CSSD departments. The final phase of excellence is to recognize the hospitals that have best adopted the standards in accordance with the recommendations and guidelines. Hospitals will receive recognition directly from CAHO which will be announced at CAHO’s annual conference in 2022 (CAHOCON 2022).

“The Awareness, Compliance and Excellence (ACE) program will be a game-changer by encouraging hospitals to adopt best practices in their CSSD service and by training staff. This in turn will play a huge role in improving patient safety by reducing nosocomial infections, ”said Vijay Agarwal, President, CAHO.

The program was launched on May 31, 2021 during one of CAHO’s education webinars for the CSSD fraternity. The launch brought together over 350 attendees, including hospital administrators, CSSD managers, infection control technicians and doctors from across India.