Editor's Note
The Joint Commission announced June 24 that it has revised its position statement on preventing nosocomial COVID-19 infections as healthcare organizations resume regular care delivery.
The Joint Commission supports the following positions:
- Continuing to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for universal masking of staff, patients, and visitors.
- Wearing filtering-facepiece or higher-level respirators for all aerosol generating procedures or surgical procedures that pose a higher risk for transmission.
- Operating under crisis standards of care is not necessary when elective surgical procedures and ambulatory care is resumed.
- Using contingency conservation strategies for filtering facepiece respirators when there is a shortage.
- Testing patients having elective surgical or other aerosol-generating procedures for COVID-19 shortly before the procedure.
- Continuing to use filtering facepiece respirators for patients having elective surgical or other aerosol-generating procedures who test negative for COVID-19 because of the risk of false-negative tests.
- Checking with state and local health departments for specific requirements on preoperative/preprocedure testing for COVID-19.
The Joint Commission also has published FAQs about the revisions for the position statement.
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