The Water Drop™: Season 2, Episode 6

Legionella Testing: Customer Scenarios

Over the last few episodes of The Water Drop, we’ve really dove into a lot of the aspects of Legionella testing from program design to what do I do if I get a result back and in between. I’d like to highlight a few customer examples, and there’s some really good, proactive, and sound organizations that are out there. So, there is one in particular, I’m thinking of a senior living chain that has implemented Legionella testing and Water Management Plans across their entire portfolio, and they’ve seen really good results with that where their people do it on time, they’ve reduced the number of outbreaks. They had a ton of outbreaks before we got in there and they’re doing proper water management practices, they’re testing to validate those Water Management Plans and that it is working as intended. They have seen really good results over the course of the last few years & they’ve really flipped the script and gone from being super reactive with a lot of outbreaks and Department of Health Investigations to having a really clean slate and moving forward. The other aspect that I would like to highlight is an organization that implemented Legionella testing but was not necessarily ready for the results. They had some results that came back, and they weren’t necessarily prepared for that. So, this is where I go back to - if you enter into a Legionella testing program, it’s really important to know what you’re going to do when those results come back positive, negative and in-between. So, there is a couple different scenarios that are highlighted that we think back to and have re-written our script on how we roll a customer out on a program, but you really want to be proactive, have the communication strategy in place, and work within your budget. And I go back to this, I say this probably ten times a day: Legionella testing is important because the only way that you are going to avoid Legionnaires’ Disease is to not come in contact with the source of Legionella. The only way to know if you have Legionella is to test for it and so it's really getting back to the overall goal of the program: no cases of Legionnaires’ Disease, don’t come in contact with it, test for it.

Want to begin Legionella testing but do not know where to start?