The Critical Care Societies Collaborative, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently announced recipients of the 2013 National Awards Program to Recognize Achievements in Eliminating Health Care-Associated Infections.

Of the eight award recipients, two are units located at Vidant Medical Center:

• The Cardiac Intermediate Unit at the East Carolina Heart Institute at Vidant Medical Center was honored for its efforts to eliminate central line-associated bloodstream infections.

• The Medical Intermediate Unit at Vidant Medical Center was recognized for its successes reducing ventilator-associated pneumonia infections.

Leaders of the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health HAI Initiative partnered with CCSC — a multidisciplinary organization composed of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, American College of Chest Physicians, American Thoracic Society and Society of Critical Care Medicine — to launch the three-year awards program in 2010. Hospitals, units and teams that successfully reduced or eliminated HAIs were eligible to apply for the awards, which recognized benchmark systems of excellence that reduced targeted HAIs for 25 months or longer.

Recipients also demonstrate national leadership in sharing and disseminating information and in using evidence-based guidelines to improve clinical practice.

“It was a privilege to receive this national award. I believe without a doubt that the care we provide to the people of eastern North Carolina is exceptional, and this award highlights the exceptional care that we give on a daily basis,” said Tammy Payne, manager, patient care services, at the Cardiac Intermediate Unit at the East Carolina Heart Institute at Vidant Medical Center. “Together, every member of our team made this accomplishment possible through daily rounding, excellent hand hygiene, exceptionally clean facilities and providing the safest care to our patients that is strongly rooted in national standards and evidence-based medicine. Excellent leadership and a commitment to education helps to create a culture where nothing but the best is accepted.”

 “The HHS-CCSC award for eliminating health care-associated infections was a great accomplishment,” said KaSheta Jackson, nurse manager at the Medical Intermediate Unit at Vidant Medical Center. “This award demonstrates the hard work and dedication of all the team members involved in providing safe patient care throughout eastern North Carolina. “

“HHS and its government and non-government partners have seen rapid progress in reducing rates of several infections, especially in intensive care settings, since the launch of the National Action Plan to Prevent Health Care-Associated Infections: Road Map to Elimination,” said HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Don Wright, MD, MPH. “This progress is due in large part of the leadership, dedication and hard work of the hospital teams such as those that we honor through this joint HHS-CCSC Awards Program. Thanks to these frontline clinicians and professionals, we are on track to achieve most 2013 targets and extend the effort beyond hospitals to ambulatory care and long-term care settings.”

Awardees were recognized May 20 in Boston during AACN’s National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition.

Additional information about the National Action Plan is available at http://www.hhs.gov/ash/initiatives/hai/actionplan/