THE COVID-19 CASE MANAGEMENT TEAM: RISE OF A NEW INFECTION PREVENTION TEAM WITH BENEFITS FOR HEALTHCARE WORKERS AT A TERTIARY FACILITY

Ms Stephanie Spilsbury¹, Ms  Eftihia Petsis¹, Ms Shannon Simpson¹

¹Alfred Health, Melbourne, Australia

Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic responses have included new and novel approaches to resourcing and structuring infection prevention (IP) teams. At Alfred Health (AH), re-structure of the service resulted in 3 distinct teams: Clinical IP, Contact Tracing and Case Management. Case Management Team (CMT) responsibilities have evolved with pandemic phases and in accordance with current recommendations. We highlight CMT responsibilities, actions and collaborations.

Method: The CMT operates a 7 day a week service, providing advice on requirements for testing AH staff with COVID-19 like symptoms, post- vaccination symptoms, furlough leave and guiding return to work through a responsive algorithm developed in collaboration with AH Infectious Disease Physicians. An online self-assessment (SA) form was developed in collaboration with Information Development Division (IDD) for completion by symptomatic staff, feeding to a centralised database and summarising furlough data on a dashboard. IDD enhanced Microsoft Teams capabilities allowing for a flexing modifiable system and integration with all IP teams.

Results: IP employed 11.6 Employed Full Time (EFT) pre-pandemic, increasing to 36.1 EFT during Melbourne’s second wave and currently employs 30.8 EFT. The CMT consisted of 6.8 EFT in Melbourne’s second wave and currently employs 9.8 EFT. Between 16/03/2020 and 18/5/2021 the CMT actioned 15,350 SA forms, leading to 21,255 staff furlough days.

Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic diversified the role of the IP Team at AH, necessitating the development of an integrated efficient system to manage symptomatic staff. Benefits include enhanced communication to staff, timely and standardised responses, and ability to respond to changing public health recommendations.

Biography:

Stephanie Spilsbury is an Infection Prevention Nurse Consultant at Alfred Health in Melbourne with 5 years experience in Infection Prevention and 10 years experience in ICU. She has an interest in antimicrobial resistance and has recently been leading a COVID-19 response team. Stephanie is a MPH candidate at James Cook University and currently sits on the AMR Incident Management Team for the Victorian DHHS.