Outbreak Rapid Response

Culturewell’s Outbreak Rapid Response helps investigate the root cause of HAI outbreaks

Contaminated surfaces can be the source of dangerous pathogens that infect vulnerable patients. Yet healthcare leaders are often forced to wait until outbreaks reach critical mass to begin their investigations because it takes a long time to get results from the clinical lab, and other infection signals are lagging indicators of performance.

Tools like 30-day readmission rates, hand hygiene compliance statistics, and clinical culture reports still leave it to Infection Preventionists to isolate germ reservoirs and develop outbreak response strategies to stop potential outbreaks. 

Culturewell offers a rapid response program to minimize the impact of outbreaks by helping Infection Preventionists get to the root of the problem quickly by:

  • Engaging fast to share our expertise as soon as there is a whiff of a potential problem associated with a particular area of the healthcare facility.
  • Tracking down the source of the problem by detecting low levels (< 1 CFU/cm²) of risky germs on previously cleaned surfaces; identifying, quantifying, and describing viable germs growing on surfaces; and collaborating with you to follow the trail wherever it leads.
  • Providing expert-curated germ-specific action recommendations for evidence-based methods to address identified contamination sources, allowing your team to get to action instead of ordering sampling supplies or preparing data for analysis.
  • Delivering compelling germ risk heatmaps with initial results as soon as 18 hours after receipt of samples in the laboratory that identify infection risk hotspots so you can align and motivate stakeholders to take immediate action plus implement more systemic preventive solutions.