Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

Executive Briefing: Electronic Surveillance of Hand Hygiene The DebMed GMS, a 2013 recipient of the North American Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation, utilizes scientificallypublished research that for the first time benchmarks the number of hand hygiene opportunities based on hospital type (teaching vs. non-teaching), hospital size and unit type (medical-surgical, critical care or emergency department). The data is dynamically customized to each hospital unit by accounting for the everchanging patient census as well as other proprietary, hospitalspecific factors that feed into the algorithm. It then calculates the number of times healthcare workers should have cleaned their hands, including tracking compliance at the point-of-care with specialized, away-from-wall monitored dispensers that provide access to hand sanitizer. Controlling costs Annually in the U.S., it's estimated that 1.7 million healthcare-acquired infections are responsible for nearly 100,000 fatalities, with direct costs as high as $45 billion. Infection control impacts both direct and indirect costs from a clinical perspective. According to the CDC, implementing a comprehensive HAI prevention strategy that includes compliance with hand hygiene guidelines can generate a 70 percent reduction in HAIs and estimated cost savings of $25 billion to $31.5 billion. Those are large numbers on a large scale. Day to day, hospital leaders are forced to make tough dollar-and-cents decisions in the operation of their facilities, for instance: Can we afford this new equipment for treatment? Do we have the budget for more clinical staff? Purchases or expenditures must demonstrate their value by return on investment standards. Electronic monitoring of hand hygiene, in the form of a data-based compliance feedback tool, must add to the bottom line by generating savings. It does so by helping hospital staff to reduce occurrences of healthcare-acquired infections, thereby enabling shorter hospital stays. Considering also the time and money spent on manual hand hygiene monitoring, the electronic method — which requires no upfront capital investment — frees up various resources, including staff and patient beds. Commitment to the right choice The reality is that not everyone is comfortable with change. The other significant reality is that adding cutting-edge infection control technology increases patient safety and lowers costs. It also has a positive impact on staff, patients and their families. Therefore, electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems should be part of a broader initiative to improve patient safety and quality of care. 15 A comprehensive HAI prevention strategy that includes compliance with hand hygiene guidelines can generate a 70 percent reduction in HAIs. In today's competitive healthcare environment, patients are seeking healthcare facilities with leading technologies to provide positive outcomes, combined with the best experience with the hospital, the staff and their physicians. They, too, want the fastest path to good health, and to minimize the negative impact of time away from their day-to-day life spent in the hospital. By implementing a leading-edge technology that contributes to higher quality care and short-as-feasible stays, you are establishing safe practices, a solid reputation and a positive image as a healthcare facility committed to best practices for your patients' care. Differentiation from the competition brings the potential to increase volume. An electronic compliance monitoring system can also have a significant impact on workplace mindset. When employees have the necessary tools to allow them to be more efficient, job satisfaction is observed both in performance results and improved morale. With the addition of an automated monitoring system, hospital leadership needs to create a strategy to enhance education regarding compliance and expectations. It is important to consider how current organizational policies, processes, and resources support or challenge hand hygiene compliance. Talk with employees about attitudes, beliefs and perceptions related to hand hygiene, along with their willingness to change behaviors. The use of the technology needs to be geared to educate, train, support and monitor staff hand hygiene compliance. As we execute tasks in our daily routines at both work and home, we've become more and more reliant on technology to solve problems and, frankly, make life easier. Demands for more efficient care are higher than ever; infection prevention — and technology that will give vital data to help control it — is a top priority. n The DebMed® GMS™ (Group Monitoring System), winner of the 2013 Frost & Sullivan Hand Hygiene Solutions New Product Innovation Award, is the world's first group monitoring system to report hand hygiene compliance rates based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene". Priced significantly less than badge-based systems, it draws on an evidence-based, statisticallyvalid algorithm which determines how many times healthcare workers should have cleaned their hands, based on patient census and degree of patient care, to derive a compliance rate. Visit www.debmed.com to attend a webinar and learn how to try it free for 60 days.

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