Catherine Kroll 
Catherine Kroll, MPH, CIC is the System Director for Infection Prevention at PeaceHealth, a 10 hospital system located in the Pacific Northwest. She has extensive experience building and maintaining strong community partnerships to produce measurably better patient outcomes. Kroll has almost 10 years of experience with PeaceHealth’s System advancing from role of facility Infection Preventionist to the System Director of Infection Prevention. Kroll previously worked for 9 years in governmental public health in local, state, and federal agencies. She takes a leadership role throughout all communities served by PeaceHealth in bringing together healthcare providers, hospitals, long-term care providers and public health to address communicable disease control. Prior to moving to Southwest Washington, Catherine completed be BSc in Microbiology at Montana State, a Master in Public Health at Emory University and an applied infectious disease epidemiology fellowship with the Florida Epidemic Intelligence Service. 

Title 
Raise Your Right Hand: Role of Infection Prevention in Healthcare Litigation 
IPU Domain: Management and Communication 

Description: The best offense is a good defense is a common saying in sports. The same phrase can be applied to the role of infection preventionist (IP) in responding to litigation. Practicing defensive medicine is discussed extensively in the literature related to providers and litigation, but the role of defensive medicine practices is not well recognized for infection prevention related risks. Litigation remains a common risk for healthcare systems across the United States and the associated costs continue to increase. In addition to the financial cost, there is also the brand integrity cost to organizations that must be considered. Adverse patient outcomes/errors, including healthcare associated infections, are a leading reason that patients seek legal recourse. However, preparing for and responding to litigation isn’t a standard part of infection prevention (IP) training. With litigation rising in both cost and frequency, now is the time to prepare the IP workforce for responding. 

This session will review and introduce common types of litigation situations that infection preventionists may encounter including discovery (both request for production and request for admission), deposition, and arbitration hearings. It will focus on work that can be done prior to litigation that can lessen the burden on an IP program when litigation occurs, protecting IP data from discoverability, and how to prepare to be a witness should it come to that. It will include specific examples from the presenter’s experience and from relevant court cases. 

Objectives: 

1. Upon completion, participant will be able to identify their role in responding to healthcare associated infection litigation. 
2. Upon completion, participant will be able to name two examples of defensive medicine practices that impact healthcare associated infections. 
3. Upon completion, participant will feel confident responding to both request for production and request for admission discovery litigation processes.