With the recent release of the National Guidelines for Legionella Control for health and aged care, many organisations have been asking questions about what the changes are and what they mean for their facility.

Michaela Toohey (Hydrochem’s Strategic Business Unit Lead, Commercial & Water Hygiene) presents this video to answer some common questions you may have, and offers advice about the steps you need to take to make sure your residents, patients and employees are kept safe and protected from a Legionella outbreak.

Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Michaela Toohey:

The guidelines were introduced to harmonise our national approach to controlling a public health risk, such as Legionella, in health facilities. They were introduced because it was recognised that it is a substantial risk, probably a greater risk than the cooling towers for patients in hospitals and residents in nursing homes.

Well, I think it provides health facilities with some key ways of approaching Legionella, very effective ways of approaching it, and it will mean they will need to address the issue. It’s not something that can be ignored. They will probably need to consider some of their current risk management approaches, get to know their systems a little bit better, seek some expert advice from companies such as HydroChem, and come up with sort of a comprehensive way of approaching the issue.

We test incoming water and we often find there’s very low levels to zero chlorine in the system, and that’s often a surprise for customers. So we supplement disinfectant residual. We’ve got different options. We use chlorine. We can use chlorine dioxide, monochloramine, depending on the type of system, and we work out what will suit that system, that facility, what’s most cost effective for them, and we go from there.

HydroChem believes that one of the best ways to follow, to manage this issue is through a risk management approach. That risk management approach means we need to get to know the facility, both from the water system risk, the risk presented of Legionella colonising their plumbing network, as well as getting to know the clinical risks that interplay with the plumbing system.

We’re in a position, after being in the area of controlling Legionella for 35 years, of knowing how to do that very cost effectively.

End of transcript.

If you have questions or want to take action, contact us to find out how we can help, or download our free 8 page summary of the new guidelines for Legionella control for more information.