CDC, FDA issue health advisory on reprocessing procedures

Editor's Note

On September 11, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a health advisory recommending that healthcare facilities arrange for a professional to assess their reprocessing procedures for maintaining, cleaning, disinfecting, and sterilizing reusable medical devices.

The agencies recommend that facilities review current processes to ensure compliance with all steps provided by device manufacturers and to have in place appropriate policies and procedures consistent with current standards and guidelines.

Among the actions the agencies advise:

• provide training to all personnel who reprocess devices
• audit adherence to cleaning, disinfection, sterilization, and device storage procedures
• have protocols to ensure that personnel can identify proper reprocessing of devices and how to respond to a reprocessing error or failure
• allow adequate time for reprocessing to ensure adherence to all device manufacturer recommended steps
• maintain documentation of reprocessing activities.

Distributed via the CDC Health Alert Network September 11, 2015, 12:15 EDT (12:15 PM EDT) CDCHAN-00382 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are alerting healthcare providers and facilities about the public health need to properly maintain, clean, and disinfect or sterilize reusable medical devices.