The nation’s fourteen regional Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organizations (QIN-QIOs) have reached an important goal of enrolling 2,336 nursing homes in the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), according to the QIN-QIO trade association. The NHSN is the most widely used healthcare-associated infection tracking system in the US. It is currently used by most hospitals and dialysis facilities, but isn’t yet used extensively by nursing homes. With the achievement of this goal, nursing homes will focus on collecting and entering data on Clostridium difficile infections, a bacterium that causes inflammation of the colon, known as colitis. The CDC will, for the first time, be able to calculate a baseline C. difficile long term care facility incidence rate. This effort was accomplished through federal cross-agency collaboration between the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the CDC. “This is just one example of the incredible, wide-reaching work that the QIN-QIO program can accomplish through its unique collaborative network of healthcare providers,” said Alison Teitelbaum, MS, MPH, CAE, executive director of the American Health Quality Association (AHQA)—the QIN-QIO program trade association. The National Action Plan to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections set a goal of enrolling 5% of nursing homes in the NHSN reporting database within 5 years-due to QIO activity, there is now the potential to have almost 15% of nursing homes nationwide reporting data. “Once we have real time data on infections through the NHSN, we can truly begin to innovate and improve the quality of care provided in nursing homes across the country,” said Jane Brock, MD, MPH, president of AHQA.