Healthy Indoors Magazine
Issue link: https://hi.iaq.net/i/310128
Healthy Indoors 31 Legionella Continued from previous page public health professionals, and building operators could be faced with very few options. Controlling Legionella at the site of amplification has the greatest promise of fore- stalling its adaptation and emergence as a more efficient killer. The Affordable Care Act: One of the laudable goals of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to reduce healthcare acquired infections (HAIs). The mechanism by which hospitals and other healthcare facilities currently detect and prevent infections acquired in the hospital is through an in-house infection prevention program. Almost exclu- sively, the professional staff who document and investi- gate possible HAIs are employees of the hospital. A key provision of the ACA is to rapidly phase out any reim- bursement to hospitals for treatment of HAIs, including Legionnaires' disease. Without an external watchdog, we could have the proverbial "fox guarding the hen house" situation with hospital staff reporting infections that could have significant financial impacts on their employers. While the professional staff tasked with detecting, report- ing, and preventing HAIs are dedicated and well trained, they have traditionally been under-funded and under- staffed, in part, because they are not a profit generating function of the hospital. Now, under the ACA, the infec- tion control professionals, referred to as Infection Pre- ventionists (IPs), will become a source of lost income for every HAI they report. The impossible situation that could evolve is not an enviable one. The predictable result of such a potential conflict could result in reduced reporting of HAIs, such as Legionnaires disease, rather than imple- menting effective preventive measures. Aging Infrastructure & Population Water line breaks & construction. We can see the crumbling roads and bridges. The frailty of our national electric grid raises its ugly head when large swaths of our country go dark due to summer heat waves. Because our drinking water distribution systems are buried and for all practical purposes invisible, widespread recognition of their degradation has not yet occurred. Pipe leaks and minor pressure losses may not be detected, but large water line breaks do elicit a response. Both on-going pipe degradation and construction efforts to repair or replace