December 1, 2020 – Clean Hands – Safe Hands announced that their customer, Floyd Health, a rural health system based in Rome, Georgia, was recently featured in the Society for Healthcare and Epidemiology’s (SHEA) Decennial Abstract Volume for their submission: A Decade in Trying to Increase Hand Hygiene – Finally Success.
Over the past 10 years, Floyd Medical Center has tried 10 different interventions to reduce hospital-associated infections (HAIs). Only one intervention actually led to a reduction of HAIs: Clean Hands – Safe Hands’ electronic reminder system.
It’s no secret that reducing HAIs is a goal of most (if not all) hospitals, and improper hand hygiene performance is widely accepted as the main contributor to HAIs. Yet somehow, so many hospitals still struggle with improving hand hygiene and reducing infections.
Floyd Medical Center implemented a two-phase longitudinal study to utilize Clean Hands – Safe Hands to reduce HAIs. In the first phase, they implemented the system in two high-risk clinical units. During the second phase, they expanded the system to three additional clinical areas that had a lower incidence of HAIs.
The hand hygiene baseline performance rate was determined to be 45% for these units prior to the Clean Hands – Safe Hands Natural Language Voice Reminder™ being turned on.
The images below represent hand hygiene performance for staff on a unit. Each bubble represents a provider wearing a badge. The shade of the bubble represents hand hygiene performance with green being good performance and red being poor performance. The size of the bubble represents the number of opportunities captured. The larger the bubble, the greater the number of opportunities.
The first image represents the unit before the Natural Language Voice Reminder™ was turned on. The second image represents the unit after the Natural Language Voice Reminder™ was turned on.
Once the voice reminder was turned on, hand hygiene improved nearly 35% within 6 months. During the first phase, there was a statistically significant 62% reduction in the average number of HAIs. During the second phase, all HAIs fell be a statically significant 60%. This resulted in annual savings of more than $1 million in direct costs of non-reimbursed HAIs.
To learn more about Floyd’s experience, check out the full abstract in SHEA’s Decennial Volume.
To learn more about how Clean Hands – Safe Hands can help your hospital have a similar reduction in infections. Contact Clean Hands – Safe Hands.
