IPC Team at Chicago Hospital Prevented Measles Outbreak While Treating Patients

Research that will be presented at the APIC conference in Phoenix today shows that the infection prevention and control (IPC) team at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital prevented a measles outbreak among its patients and staff.

The IPC team learned of a positive measles case in a migrant shelter in Chicago, where the hospital in question is. They then “quickly established strategies to protect patients, visitors, and staff. They worked closely with the emergency department, immediate care, transport team, and other departments to adopt a standard operating procedure (SOP) to identify and isolate any patient suspected of having measles.”

The precautions taken resulted in zero secondary cases of measles being acquired in the 364-bed hospital. 64 confirmed cases of the disease were reported across the city between March and April of 2024, “and 10% (6 cases) of those were admitted to the facility. The SOP led to seventeen suspected cases placed in airborne isolation and eleven patients meeting the criteria for measles testing in the Emergency Department, resulting in eight patient admissions.”

The SOP’s success was aided by “communications among the Illinois Department of Public Health, hospital department leads, senior hospital leadership, and other stakeholders.”