Top 5 Tips for Infection "Control" in Home Care

Let’s face it—nobody loves talking about infection control, but in non-medical home care, it’s super important. We might not be able to stop clients or staff from getting sick, but we can do a lot to reduce exposure and keep everyone healthier. Take a look at your infection control policies and at a minimum, those should address the following 5 areas:

1. Training - minimum initial and annual staff training, per OSHA, on blood borne pathogens to include Hepatitis B, HIV, and universal precautions is a must. The OSHA General Duty Clause covers all infection control, training, and measures, as well as emergency preparedness standards and procedures. It's up to the agency how these are handled. You or the agency will be held accountable if an incident occurs and is investigated by OSHA. I do always recommend checking the CDC & OSHA websites at least once a year.

2. Protocols - policies also need to address protocols for staff to prevent them from getting sick themselves and also prevent them from contaminating or reinfecting a client. Primarily you're going to be using PPE and universal precautions to cover this. If you're still having your staff self-screen prior to client contact, your protocols need to address the agency's response if/when the answers to those screening questions are flagged.

OSHA's General Duty Clause requires that you have a Respiratory Protection Program when N95 respirators are in use. Slusher Consulting has edited a Mini-Respiratory Protection Program written by the Texas Department of Insurance, to fit the needs of a Non-Medical Home Care agency. You can download this document and add it to your own Infection Control program for FREE HERE.

3. Source Control - This is where the germs came from. Hospital waiting rooms, doctors' offices, the grocery store, etc. How could we reduce or prevent that infection from happening to begin with? Make sure you have enough PPE to protect your staff and clients if comes around again or if a new disease arises. PPE is vital to source control. That is why it is so important for every agency to have a good supply of gloves, masks, gowns, hand sanitizer, all those kinds of precautionary items.

4. Monitoring - per the CDC, you need to monitor community transmission levels on a regular weekly or bi-weekly basis, at least. Especially if you're in the more urban areas where the populations are greater, you monitor the community transmission levels through your local health department to determine what the risk might be for COVID or any other communicable disease that is of current concern. (Think flu season.)

5. Reporting - What are we going to report or log? Any client infection, not just communicable disease. This includes, but is not limited to:

Urinary tract infection, respiratory infection, sinus, ear/nose/throat infections, strep throat, any systemic infection, or a skin infection. All of those need to be monitored because they're going to help you track the general wellbeing, and sometimes decline, of your clients. This goes a long way in helping your staff and clients' families maintain clients safely at home. Also, this is information that you'll use during your quality assurance or QAPI meetings that are done at least two times a year.

Check your CDC and OSHA websites, and your local health department. Save all those links, and use them. There is so much more going around now than there used to be. Germs are adapting, so we must do the same. It used to just be if you're sick, don't go to work. Right? It's just not that simple anymore. There's more to it now with lots of risks and lots to manage but it IS manageable.

Infection control also ties into a few everyday practices that agencies sometimes overlook. Regular communication with clients and caregivers helps you catch issues before they become bigger problems. Something as simple as checking in about symptoms, recent exposures, or changes in the home can make a real difference. The documentation habits discussed in reporting in home care support this because you are already tracking patterns and noticing what is out of the ordinary.

Training plays a role too. Even brief refreshers help caregivers stay consistent with hand hygiene, PPE use, and safe work habits. Agencies that invest time in caregiver development, like the ideas in caregiver training and education, usually see fewer preventable infections simply because their team knows what to look for.

Some infections also signal bigger concerns about a client's health, mobility, or environment. Those trends often show up again during QAPI review, which connects this topic back to overall quality. You can see how infection data influences decisions in QAPI in home care, especially when certain types of infections repeat across multiple clients.

The more your agency treats infection control as part of everyday operations, the easier it becomes to manage. It is not about eliminating every germ. It is about building habits that consistently protect clients and caregivers.

Download Your Free Mini-Respiratory Protection Program - Take some time to look around while you're there!

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Infection "Control" in Home Care

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