Section 1: Collects facility demographics and critical infrastructure information and is intended for completion by the facility prior to the ICAR (provided as separate PDF to send to facility, Section 1: Demographics and Critical Infrastructurepdf icon. These questions are often ones that require the facility to look up or consult with certain staff members and thus pre-collection often saves times during the actual assessment. The ICAR facilitator should decide if any of the responses need to be verbally reviewed or require further explanation at the beginning of the assessment. If no further clarification is needed, then the facilitator should start on the next section and refer back to this section as needed.
Section 1 of the facilitator guide provides the rationale behind the questions, and how the answers may be utilized during the rest of assessment.
Sections 2-7: Are intended for review during a discussion of policies and practices with the facility. These sections cover personal protective equipment (PPE), hand hygiene, environmental cleaning, general IPC practices, resident-specific practices, and SARS-CoV-2 testing.
The questions are formatted to include:
- Scenarios such as what type of PPE would be used in certain situations,
- Closed-ended questions with “yes/no” response options, and,
- Open-ended questions which prompt for more descriptive responses
- For the open-ended questions, common responses are often listed below each question to aid in response collection but may contain answers that would not be considered a recommended IPC practice. The facilitator guide should be consulted for the recommended IPC practice.
Sections 8-14: Are intended for use during an in-person or video tour of the facility and include a review of screening areas, hand hygiene supplies, PPE use and storage, frontline HCP interviews, and breakrooms, and a designated COVID-19 care area. These sections are meant to assess how some of the discussed policies and practices are being implemented. If this tool is being used as part of an in-person assessment, additional areas and observations of HCP practices can be assessed beyond what is listed in this tool. The facilitator guide provides some additional instructions for use of these sections.
This tool to include the facilitator guide will be updated as nursing home guidance is updated. Please check back routinely following guidance updates to access the most current tool.
The TeleICAR team within the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion can provide training to public health jurisdictions on the use of the tool to include TeleICAR demonstrations with facilities. A Frequently Asked Questions document regarding TeleICAR remote assistance is also available. For more information contact, teleicar@cdc.gov.
