Lessons from COVID-19: Prioritize Infection Prevention and Control for PALTC
January 2022
Post-acute and long-term care (PALTC) residents, staff, and leaders across the United States have faced a multitude of challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these challenges, the pandemic also taught many lessons and created opportunities to improve quality. Real Chemistry Vice President Theresa Schmidt led her fellow board members in the Advancing Excellence in Long-Term Care Collaborative in development of a white paper, Open Letter to the Biden Administration, to leverage their diverse perspectives to inform the Biden‐Harris administration and help ensure that emerging policies and regulations incorporate clinical, ethical and operational considerations to help improve the lives of vulnerable residents and staff in PALTC.
Theresa and the team also developed a series of articles, each reflecting one of the core recommendations and the rationale behind it. In the first of six installments in McKnights Long-Term Care News, Chris Laxton (Executive Director at AMDA) and Patrick Luib (Sr. Director at Maximus) focus on infection control. Other pieces will address person-centered care, staff stability, quality assurance and performance improvement, value-based payment, and cross-agency collaboration.