[Table of Contents]

Volume: 22S1 • April 1996

Guidelines for Preventing the Transmission of Tuberculosis in Canadian Health Care Facilities and Other Institutional Settings

IV. TB MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

I. Program Review and Evaluation

Each health care facility should develop guidelines for the review and evaluation of its TB management program that include the following:

• regular review of the program to evaluate adherence to it (more frequent review is required when problems with the program are identified);
• ongoing review of all TB exposure events that have occurred (see Section IV.D.8);
• minimum yearly review of the records of patients with TB to determine effectiveness of the management program. Items to be examined include
  
  

  • Time intervals from admission to
    

  • suspicion of potential diagnosis of TB
    
  • initiation of isolation
    
  • initiation of investigations and obtaining specimens
    
  • initiation of treatment.
    
    Time intervals from
    
  • ordering specimen collection to actual specimen collection and reporting of AFB smear results, and culture and sensitivity results
    
  • initiation of isolation precautions to discontinuation of isolation precautions.
    
    

  Adherence to isolation policies.

• minimum yearly review of HCW screening data to evaluate the effectiveness of the program and to assess the need to change screening frequency; and
• periodic re-assessment of the health care facility risk to determine if the risk has changed. Policies and procedures should be changed, as needed, to reflect findings of the review and evaluation program.

[Previous] [Table of Contents] [Next]