This Emergency Preparedness and Infection Control (EPIC) Toolkit is designed to assist you in triaging information essential to your facility needs- now or in a pandemic. In using this Toolkit, you will find the most current resources in the clinical and regulatory realm. You will also be directed to important resources focusing on industrial hygiene, incident command, and infection prevention program administration.
It is essential that SNFs are capable of addressing pandemic infections in the context of broader emergency preparedness. The first step in doing so involves creating and implementing an incident command structure. To that end, the Toolkit offers resources from the Nursing Home Incident Command System (NHICS) for facilities to use in establishing a framework and structure for managing a pandemic infection.
In addition, the Toolkit provides facilities with a wide range of pertinent resources in infectious disease management; industrial hygiene management; the role of the facility Infection Preventionist; and administrative oversight to ensure compliance and promote best practices in infection prevention and control.
You will find many of these resources also identified in different sections of the EPIC website, but they have all been compiled here to serve as a “one stop shop” for you to use as Toolkit.