This episode highlights how accrediting bodies fit in to the overall patient safety landscape and their role. We are joined by Sylvia Garcia-Houchins. MBA, RN, CIC, who sets the record straight on the role of healthcare accreditors and some of the myths that are circulating about what surveyors do. This episode is a must listen for all healthcare personnel!

Hosted by:

Silvia Quevedo, CAE

About our Guest:

Sylvia Garcia-Houchins, MBA, RN, CIC, Director, Infection Prevention and Control, Division of Healthcare Improvement

Sylvia Garcia-Houchins is the Director, Infection Prevention and Control in the Division of Healthcare Improvement. In this role, she is responsible for the oversight of infection prevention and control for The Joint Commission.

Ms. Garcia-Houchins has over 30 years of experience in infection control in both hospital and long term care settings, as well as eight years of clinical microbiology experience. Most recently, she served as the Director, Infection Control at University of Chicago Medicine and was also an intermittent consultant for Joint Commission Resources for 10 years. Ms. Garcia-Houchins has provided infection prevention and control consultation, assessment and education in a variety of health care settings including hospitals, health clinics, ambulatory surgery, and dialysis centers both domestically and internationally. Her specialty areas of interest include disinfection and sterilization, dialysis, infection prevention during renovation and construction, and control of Legionella. One of the highlights of her career has been training health care professionals in Saudi Arabia as Infection Preventionists. She served as a test writer and reviewer for the Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology, and has also authored numerous articles and book chapters related to infection control including a chapter in the APIC Text and the Cleaning, Disinfection and Sterilization Chapter in The APIC/JCR Infection Prevention and Control Workbook, Third Edition.

Ms. Garcia-Houchins earned a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, a master’s of business administration from the Keller Graduate School of Management, and her nursing degree from Truman College.