Comments from the Audience at the 1987 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology

I feel that there is a need to apply epidemiological methods to extended health care facilities. At our institu tion we recently completed a survey of nursing homes and hospitals in Florida to evaluate the available infection control resources and the infection control practices. We saw a definite difference in the level of practice between hospitals and extended care facilities. The hospitals had more available resources as indicated by the number of epidemiologists, computer access, infection control meet ings per month, and practitioners. We also found in our survey that the responding extended care facilities were more likely to have practices that increase cost without increasing the infection control within the institution. They were more likely to change IV tubings every 24 hours instead of every 48 hours, to perform routine blad der catheter care, to use disposable dishes, to do environ mental culturing, and to do employee physicals. The nursing homes also responded that they were more inter ested in obtaining help, education, and basic infection control information than hospitals. Florida develop guidelines for review of infection control prac tices states and the methodologies discussed today could certainly be used to assess the occurrence of infection and control methods infor Control