Recent Posts
CHSH Partner Wins Two Awards for Patient Safety
Lake Oconee, Greensboro, GA – January 9, 2019 – Clean Hands – Safe Hands announced today that its partner, The Medical Center, Navicent Health (MCNH), was recognized at the Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) Patient Safety and Quality Summit with two patient safety awards. First, MCNH received the prestigious Circle of Excellence Award for cumulative excellence in patient safety over the last five years. This recognition is part of GHA’s Partnership for Health and Accountability (PHA) Quality and Patient
Infection Control Today: Top 5 Hand Hygiene Trends for 2019
Hand hygiene is the foundation of infection prevention, but often doesn’t get the same attention as other factors. While one could argue that hand hygiene isn’t the most exciting infection control intervention, it can have the biggest impact on reducing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and is the only intervention that can impact all types of HAIs. Although washing hands hasn’t fundamentally changed in over a century, there are a surprising number of changes happening in the hand hygiene industry.
Prevention Strategist: Can Real-Time Data Drive Hand Hygiene Improvements?
Hospitals and clinics are increasingly embracing real-time data to improve patient safety, the patient experience and other aspects of healthcare. Even today, data is still typically collected manually, collated and then distributed in a report format, usually months later. This made responding to the data in a timely and meaningful way extremely challenging at best, and impossible most of the time. Enter the Internet of Things (IoT [the inter-connection via the internet of computing devices embedded in everyday
Flu Season Means Better Hand Hygiene
In order to keep patients – and healthcare workers – safe, the best practice is for clinicians to clean their hands every time they enter or exit a patient’s room, as well as during the My 5 Moments recommended by the World Health Organization. That’s the best practice. Unfortunately, it isn’t reality – on average, providers clean their hands less than half the times that they should[1]. That said, a recent study showed that healthcare workers are more
HAIs Are The 4th Leading Cause of Death
If you live in the United States, what’s most likely to kill you? Heart disease Cancer Stroke Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs)[1] So, HAIs are the 4th leading cause of death in the U.S. As well as the #1 preventable cause of death. Another way to look at the data is this: HAIs kill more people than prostate and breast cancer combined.[2] With so many people dying from HAIs, it’s surprising how little press coverage this generates. When you look
HAIs Are Down 16%
A recent study showed that healthcare-associated infections (HAI) have decreased by 16% in the United States, comparing 2015 to 2011[1]. In 2011, 11,282 patients in 183 hospitals were surveyed, and 4.0% of them had an HAI. In 2015, 12,299 patients in 199 hospitals were surveyed, and 3.2% of them had an HAI. This is a 16% decrease. It means that the odds of a patient having an HAI on any given day has dropped from one in 25
Clean Hands – Safe Hands Presents Inaugural Customer Awards for Q318
ATLANTA, GA – November 30, 2018 – Clean Hands – Safe Hands (CHSH) announced today that it has launched quarterly Customer Awards to recognize its hospital customers with the highest performance in terms of hand hygiene or healthcare-associated infection reduction. Winners for the third quarter of 2018 were presented with awards the week of November 26, 2018. They included: Highest Hand Hygiene Performance of all Technicians using CHSH: Winner Brenda Sackey (front) from Emory Healthcare’s Long Term Acute
C. diff is Becoming More Common…Everywhere
We’re in the last few days of November, which is C. diff Awareness Month, and NPR has come out with a report that more cases of C. diff are arising from the community rather than from hospitals. (Here’s the NPR article.) Clostridium difficile, which affects almost half a million Americans a year and kills nearly 30,000 of them[1], used to primarily be seen in hospitals. However, C. diff is increasingly being seen in the community, outside of hospitals.
The Joint Commission: Will You Get a Hand Slap or a High Five?
Has your hospital been impacted by The Joint Commission’s new 2018 standards for hand hygiene yet? As you probably know, the new standards represent a major change in how your organization is evaluated. With the old standards, you just had to have a system in place to improve hand hygiene. Under the new standards, you now have to ensure that your staff is actually performing hand hygiene…just having a system in place won’t cut it. Now that we’re
Poor Hand Hygiene Contributed to 10 Children’s Deaths
The situation in New Jersey is tragic. An adenovirus outbreak at a rehab facility has killed ten children and sickened 30 others[1] to date. Unfortunately, suffering and death from healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) is not uncommon. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that 10% of hospital patients in developed countries will develop an HAI[2]. In the past, the public has largely remained blissfully ignorant about HAIs, but that’s changing as more consumer media outlets are reporting on outbreaks,