FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Marc Chow, Executive Director, NRAA
NRAA joins forces with the CDC’s Making Dialysis Safer for Patients Coalition
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (September 27, 2016) — We are proud to announce that NRAA has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Making Dialysis Safer for Patients Coalition. This is a group of organizations from all areas of the dialysis community that seeks to expand the use of CDC recommendations for infection prevention practices in dialysis and decrease infection rates.
By teaming up with the Making Dialysis Safer for Patients Coalition, we are joining professional groups, healthcare providers, advocacy organizations, private industries, and others dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of infection prevention in dialysis patients.
About the Making Dialysis Safer for Patients Coalition
CDC, the nation’s public health agency, recognizes preventing and controlling infections as a top priority. Currently, CDC is at the forefront of federal efforts to protect patients from healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), including within dialysis settings. CDC launched a new effort—the Making Dialysis Safer for Patients Coalition—to continue to address infection prevention strategies within dialysis clinics and the dialysis community.
The Making Dialysis Safer for Patients Coalition seeks to:
- Improve adherence to infection prevention recommendations within the dialysis community
- Engage dialysis facilities and partners in infection prevention efforts to reduce deadly infections
- Empower dialysis patients and their caregivers to advocate for their health throughout treatment
This initiative plans to partner with organizations, such as the NRAA, across the dialysis community to disseminate, utilize and apply evidence-based practices to prevent infections in dialysis patients. This initiative also plans to raise awareness in the dialysis community.
As a committed Coalition partner, we will conduct activities to: increase awareness among our organizational members through communication and educational efforts about CDC Core Interventions and Guidelines to reduce Bloodstream Infections; implement CDC Core Interventions by facilitating adoption through use of the Making Dialysis Safer materials and resources; and share experiences and findings by providing a summary of our activities and metrics, sharing implementation strategies, and collaborating with other Coalition participants.
We encourage our members to utilize the FREE Continuing Education (CE) course “Infection Prevention in Dialysis Settings,” which reviews CDC recommended practices and techniques in an understandable and applicable format. Other resources, such as CDC’s Core Interventions for Dialysis Bloodstream Infection Prevention, offer proven practices to decrease bloodstream infection rates in dialysis facilities. Visit the CDC Dialysis Safety website and download tools to learn more.
About NRAA
NRAA is a voluntary organization representing dialysis providers throughout the United States. Our membership is primarily community based small dialysis organizations (SDOs) and medium-sized dialysis organizations (MDOs), both for-profit and non-profit providers serving patients in urban, rural and suburban areas in both free-standing and hospital-based facilities. For more information, go to www.nraa.org.
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