Two new resources from AHRQ are part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to protect nursing home residents and staff from COVID-19. Both are intended to support the use of observational audits, which help facilities understand if staff members are fully complying with infection prevention practices:

·  Competency Check vs. Observational Audit: Validate Nursing Home Staff Performance to Improve Infection Prevention Processes for COVID-19. This comparison tool helps skilled nursing facilities differentiate between competency validation for regulatory compliance and observational auditing for quality assurance performance improvement activities.

·  Observational Audits: A Pathway to Improving Infection Prevention and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19. This step-by-step guide helps facilities establish a process for observational auditing to provide a true assessment of performance in the actual work environment, and helps facilities collect data to support improvements in infection prevention.