About the Toolkit Development
ESRD Toolkit
The ESRD Toolkit was developed during a 2-year project called the National Opportunity To Improve Infection Control in End-Stage Renal Disease Facilities, conducted through a partnership that brought together subject matter experts and providers in the field.
Background
Project Partners
Final Reports
Background
In 2007, 12 percent of dialysis patients in the United States were hospitalized due to septicemia; 16 percent of dialysis patients died of an infection. Many of these infections are preventable through evidence-based infection control practices not currently used uniformly in U.S. dialysis facilities.
To address this problem, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) funded the National Opportunity To Improve Infection Control in ESRD (NOTICE), a 2-year project to develop and implement resources to help dialysis facilities reduce infections.
The project had the following goals:
- Reduce vascular access infections
- Identify and enhance best practices for infection control among clinicians
- Improve safety culture using AHRQ’s Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) framework
The toolkit was developed in the course of the project to provide an ongoing resource for dialysis centers to use to create sustainable changes that can reduce healthcare-associated infections.
Project Partners
The NOTICE project was conducted through a partnership that brought together subject matter experts and providers in the field.
Project partners included—
- Health Research and Educational Trust
- University of Michigan – Kidney Epidemiology Cost Center
- Renal Network of the Upper Midwest (Renal Network 11)
- Southeastern Kidney Council, Inc. (Renal Network 6)
Final Reports
The NOTICE project was completed in two phases. Phase 1 focused on developing an evidence-based infection control worksheet, assessing its usefulness in dialysis facilities, and developing a process for helping facility staff understand infection control practices and ways to improve them while creating systems and a culture to sustain the improvements. Phase 2 focused on pilot testing materials developed in phase 1 in a set of ESRD facilities and disseminating the NOTICE project’s findings through publication and conference presentations.
- NOTICE phase 1 final report [
PDF version - 4.44 MB ] - NOTICE phase 2 final report [ PDF version - 10.65 MB ]
