What is NISPAC?
The National Infection Surveillance Program for Aged Care (NISPAC) aims to reduce infections and improve antimicrobial use associated with aged care services by:
- Monitoring and reporting infections and antimicrobial use
- Promoting best practice via education and support of all staff responsible for infection prevention and control and antimicrobial stewardship programs
- Enhancing quality care in RACHs via standardised and data-driven program delivery.
NISPAC is overseen by the Victorian Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance System (VICNISS) Coordinating Centre. The NISPAC Support Team includes staff specialised in Infectious Diseases, Infection Prevention and Control, Epidemiology, Statistics and Information Technology.
What are the NISPAC surveillance modules?
Listed below are outcome and process surveillance modules currently or soon available for NISPAC participating residential aged care homes.
| Category | Module | Methodology | Status |
| Staff vaccination | Influenza |
Period prevalence |
Established |
| Significant organism events | Laboratory Identified Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms | Incidence | Established |
| Clostridioides difficile infection | New | ||
| Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection | Established | ||
| Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci infection | Established | ||
| Occupational Health and Safety | Occupational Exposure | Continuous Incidence | Under development |
| Resident vaccination | Herpes Zoster | Point prevalence | Established |
| Influenza | Established | ||
| Pneumococcal | Established | ||
| COVID-19 | New | ||
| Respiratory Syncytial Virus | Under development | ||
| Infection | Urinary Tract infection | Continuous Incidence | New |
The Aged Care National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (NAPS) can be accessed via the NISPAC platform. Aged Care NAPS is a single day survey that monitors infections and assesses antimicrobial use. It is overseen by the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship and VICNISS Coordinating Centre.
NISPAC data collection forms are to be used to collect all required data. Instructions, data collection forms and training webinars for each surveillance module are available to registered users via the NISPAC portal.
How is the is data transferred to NISPAC?
Data submission/transfer is via the NISPAC platform using web-based data collection forms (web-forms).
NISPAC collates the data and provides benchmarking reports to the participating RACHs. These reports are accessible by authorised persons only.