Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
Your industry news - first
The original and best - for over 20 years!
We strongly recommend viewing Cleanzine full size in your web browser. Click our masthead above to visit our website version.
Hill-Rom launches new hospital hand hygiene monitoring solution
Nearly every major public health organisation agrees that ineffective hand-hygiene (hand washing or using disinfecting sprays, wipes or gels) is one of the most significant contributors to the problem of hospital-acquired infections.
Further compounding the problem is the fact that compliance rates amongst caregivers are difficult to track and often found to be low.
Hill-Rom has developed a new system to help hospitals monitor hand-hygiene rates: the Hill-Rom Hand Hygiene Compliance Solution. The new offering provides real-time monitoring and staff reminders, simplifies reporting, and can use the same hardware and devices as other Hill-Rom real-time locating solutions.
"We've known for a very long time that hand washing is vital to preventing the spread of disease. While many institutions have made significant progress in reducing the rates of hospital-acquired infections, there is an opportunity to further reduce the burden of these infections with vigorous adherence to evidence-based hand-washing guidelines," says JoAnn Trybulski, PhD, ARNP, DPNAP, Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Miami Hospital. "We must make progress to improve compliance with these guidelines."
The new Hill-Rom Hand Hygiene Compliance Solution has been implemented in a number of institutions around the US that are participating in a pilot programme. With more than 2.5 million hand-hygiene events recorded to date, the system is already helping hospital administrators better understand their staff's hand-hygiene patterns. As a result, most participating hospitals are finding they have been over-estimating compliance and can better identify where their missed opportunities are.
Adam McMullin, Vice President & General Manager, Hill-Rom IT Solutions says: "Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to do, and that is certainly true for hospitals in achieving universal compliance with hand-hygiene guidelines.
"The good news for hospitals is that a number of studies have shown that implementing a hand-hygiene monitoring program along with policies and interventions can improve hand-hygiene compliance rates throughout the institution."
Hill-Rom's vast experience with thousands of hospitals was leveraged to create the Hill-Rom Hand Hygiene Compliance Solution, which includes a platform that uses badge-based locating technology to track hand-hygiene events throughout the hospital. The system facilitates automatic, continuous monitoring and recording of every time a staff member uses a hand-hygiene station. It proactively alerts caregivers and provides a gentle reminder upon entering a care environment. Manual monitoring and reporting can be eliminated. Managers will have the ability to run reports for their staff, providing valuable data for training and generating the data in a format to support reporting.
Linda Jamison, MSN, RN, CIC, CCRC, Infection Prevention & Research Admin, UC Health-West Chester Hospital, says: "Maintaining consistent hand-hygiene compliance among healthcare workers with direct patient access has proven to be an ongoing challenge for medical facilities throughout the nation.
"Given the great importance of maintaining proper hand-hygiene practices as it relates to limiting the spread of harmful viruses, we are very excited about the introduction of a tool which will ultimately help our organisation to more closely monitor and evaluate our staff hand-washing practices. Having access to data which is collected through an automated mechanism will provide greater reliability as opposed to data collected through observational methodologies. We are excited by this new technology and are committed to exploring its functionality."
T: (812) 934-7777
W: www.hill-rom.com
13th June 2013