Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care

Note to Readers

The following document is a summary guide of infection prevention recommendations for outpatient (ambulatory care) settings. The recommendations included in this document are not new but rather reflect existing evidence-based guidelines produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee. This summary guide is based primarily upon elements of Standard Precautions and represents the minimum infection prevention expectations for safe care in ambulatory care settings. Readers are urged to consult the full guidelines for additional background, rationale, and evidence behind each recommendation.  All guidelines are available at:  Guidelines and Recommendations

The Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings and its companion Checklist (appendix A) have been updated to be consistant with the Outpatient Settings Infection Control Assessment Tool (available at: https://www.cdc.gov/hai/prevent/infection-control-assessment-tools.html), that was developed to assist health departments. The same infection prevention elements are included in both the checklist and assessment tool, however the facility demographics sections differ slightly. The documents on the page are intended for use by anyone needing information about general infection prevention measures in outpatient (ambulatory care) settings.

Download the Guide

• Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings (Complete Guide and Checklist) [PDF – 1,470 KB]
• Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings (Checklist only) [PDF – 1,287 KB]