Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

11 INFECTION CONTROL Health follows the CDC guidelines, which currently require the wearing of masks and appropriate social distancing while in healthcare settings. We provide care to people who are potentially more vulnerable, including people who are immunocompromised, so we are diligent in taking these types of extra precautions, over and above what is called for in many other types of community settings. We continually monitor the guidance from state and federal authorities and, given the rising vaccination of the community and declining cases in our area, have recently lied outdoor masking require- ments for those who are fully vaccinated and not providing patient care. Andrew Karson, MD. CMO of UMass Memorial Medical Center (Worcester, Mass.): UMass Memorial Health is fol- lowing the Massachusetts Department of Public Health mask requirements, which require healthcare workers to wear, at a minimum, procedural masks while work- ing in our facilities. All of our employees must wear, at a minimum, UMass-issued procedural masks in all clinical and nonclinical areas with three exceptions: Employees can take off their mask if they are alone in a room behind a closed door, eating, as long as they are at least 6 feet away from others, or in a cubicle in a solely nonclinical area and at least 6 feet away from others. UMass is also follow- ing health department requirements by asking patients to wear masks as much as possible whenever they are outside of their patient rooms or if they are in their room but within 6 feet of another person. When the health department does alter its requirements in order to allow for em- ployees and/or patients to be unmasked, UMass will then determine if we feel comfortable, at that time, supporting unmasking employees and/or patients in our local area based on the local rate of COVID-19 positivity and the density of variant strains in our community, as well as the vaccination rates of our employees and patients. Annabelle de St. Maurice, MD. Co- Chief Infection Prevention Officer of UCLA Health (Los Angeles): We will continue to require masks in the hospital setting regardless of vaccination status per CDC guidelines. n 5 notes on infectious disease physician compensation last year By Mackenzie Bean I nfectious disease physicians had an average income of $245,000 in 2020, down from $256,000 in 2019, according to Medscape's infec- tious diseases physician compensation report published May 14. The report is based on survey responses from 17,903 practicing U.S. physi- cians collected between Oct. 6, 2020, and Feb. 11. One percent of respon- dents were infectious disease physicians. Four more report findings: 1. Thirty-two percent of infectious disease physicians reported some de- cline in compensation last year. 2. Of the physicians reporting a compensation drop, 83 percent cited pandemic-related issues, such as job loss or a reduction in hours, as the reason for the income drop. 3. Among infectious disease physicians whose income dropped because of pandemic-related factors, 55 percent said they anticipated their income would return to normal in the next two to three years. 4. Among all specialties, infectious disease physicians were most likely to say they did not feel fairly compensated. Just 44 percent of infectious disease physicians said they felt fairly compensated, down from 51 per- cent in 2019. n Hand-washing temporarily spiked during pandemic, Chicago hospital finds By Mackenzie Bean H and hygiene compliance among healthcare workers at the Univer- sity of Chicago Medical Center soared early in the pandemic, but fell back to pre-pandemic levels after just four months, according to a study pub- lished April 26 in JAMA Internal Medicine. The medical center uses an automated hand hygiene monitoring system that tracks how often staff wash their hands or use sanitizer when entering and ex- iting a patient's room. Researchers ana- lyzed compliance trends at the hospital from September 2019 to August 2020. In September 2019, baseline monthly compliance was 54.5 percent across all units, a standard figure for the hospital. During the pandemic, monthly compli- ance peaked at 75.5 percent across all units and 84.4 percent for all units that were temporarily converted into COVID-19 units. Hand hygiene compliance hit a daily peak of 92.8 percent across all hos- pital units on March 29, 2020, and hit 100 percent across all COVID-19 units March 28, 2020. However, by August 2020, monthly compliance had dropped back to 56 percent, re- searchers found. Various factors may have contributed to the jump in compliance, including staff members' increased awareness of the importance of hand-washing during the pandemic and more re- mote rounding by clinicians. "As hospitals set hand hygiene goals, this study suggests high compliance is possible, even with automated monitoring, yet difficult to sustain," researchers said. "The recent decline in compliance should be a clarion call to hospitals currently experiencing COVID-19 surges." n

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