Hear from the 2020 Hand Hygiene Excellence Award Winners – Prisma Health Laurens County Hospital
This annual award recognizes healthcare facilities that sustain the highest level of hand hygiene compliance through the use of SC Johnson Professional’s DebMed Electronic Hand Hygiene Monitoring System.
The Challenge
How can healthcare leaders drive quality improvement, eliminate HAC penalties and increase economic efficiencies?
“Our research has found that the large majority of hand hygiene
that is important to protecting the patient occurs inside the room, and because of this we needed a solution that would monitor all WHO 5-Moments for hand hygiene and align with the best practices that we teach our staff.” (In reference to research done at Prisma Health-Upstate, formerly Greenville Health System, and why The DebMed System was selected)
“By using traditional surveillance (Direct Observation), we
realized there were many missed opportunities. You can’t capture key moments in a room when you are just walking by and observing ‘in and out’ procedures.”2
“Hand hygiene compliance has always been a top priority for us,
but it was difficult to track rates with our previous auditing system. We wanted to get a stronger handle on preventing infection and ensuring that our staff understood and took advantage of every hand hygiene moment throughout their shifts”3
The Solution
Why leading hospitals are choosing the DebMed Electronic Hand Hygiene Compliance Monitoring System.
“We didn’t want staff to feel they were being punished, but
rather that the system was truly for excellent patient care. I believe the system really puts us into the next level being able to teach and train our staff to look at opportunities beyond just foaming in and foaming out.”1
“We were impressed that the DebMed System used the
The Results
“For the first time, I hear nurses encouraging families, visitors
“We have seen a tremendous improvement in hand hygienecompliance which has led to a significant reduction in MRSA infections and a cost avoidance of about $434,000. These improvements have validated for us, and our leadership, that the focus that we have and the resources that we were spending on hand hygiene have paid off and improved patient outcomes.” Said Connie Steed, MSN, RN, CIC, FAPIC, Director, Infection Prevention, when speaking of the MRSA reduction study conducted at Greenville Health System.4
“Over the past few years, we’ve worked diligently to understand
The testimonials and clinical outcomes referenced above were provided by individuals within hospitals using the DebMed System and SC Johnson Professional products. The results indicated above may also have been the result of implementing multi-modal infection prevention strategies.
References:
- Riverside White Paper – DebMed System Nearly Doubles Hand Hygiene Compliance at Riverside Medical Center
- CVPH White Paper – The DebMed System, a catalyst for hand hygiene culture change at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital Riverside Medical Center White Paper – DebMed System nearly doubles hand hygiene compliance at Riverside Medical Center
- Atlantic Health System White Paper – Incorporating the DebMed System into a multimodal infection prevention strategy drive HAI reductions and hand hygiene compliance improvements within the Atlantic Health System.
- Kelly J, Blackhurst D, McAtee W, Steed C. Electronic hand hygiene monitoring as a tool for reducing healthcare-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection. Am J Infect Control 2016;44:956-7.
