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Hospitals have been trying to solve the hand-hygiene compliance problem for a long time,” said Kevin Wittrup, CEO of BIOVIGIL “Our badge provides the cutting-edge reminder and reassurance functions that have a proven impact on HHC.
Ann Arbor, MI (PRWEB) March 03, 2015
In a segment that aired Monday, March 2nd on NPR News Morning Edition, science correspondent Shankar Vedantam shared research from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania about the drastic decrease in hand-hygiene compliance that occurs over the course of a healthcare worker’s shift. He suggested that the problem could be solved in part by alerts on healthcare workers’ badges that remind them to perform hand hygiene when they enter and exit a patient’s room.
“Over the course of a single [healthcare worker’s] shift, we see a dramatic decline in compliance. So, from the beginning to the end of a work shift, the rate at which caregivers are sanitizing their hands drops...by about eight percentage points,” said Katherine Milkman, Assistant Professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of the study referenced on this morning’s segment. She went on to add, “the eight percentage point decline we’re seeing over the course of a single work day could account for thousands of patient lives and billions of dollars of spending that is unnecessary if we could simply eliminate that decline.”
As NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam explores the reasons for the precipitous decline in hand-hygiene compliance over the course of a day and the ways to bring compliance back up, he suggests “maybe these badges that measure whether you’ve used the hand sanitizer, maybe they could send off a little alarm every time you have patient contact and you’ve forgotten to use the hand sanitizer.”
In fact that technology already exists and is in place in hospitals in the United States. BIOVIGIL Hygiene Technologies develops and manufacturers hand hygiene awareness and compliance solutions that are designed to detect and monitor hand hygiene opportunities in healthcare facilities. BIOVIGIL tracks compliance through the use of simple room sensors and small, personal badges worn by healthcare workers.
The badge displays a green light indicating a compliant state, a yellow light indicating that hand hygiene needs to be performed, and a red light indicating a non-compliant state. This public-facing alert reminds healthcare workers as well as patients and their families when sanitization needs to occur. Hospitals that use BIOVIGIL’s system have average hand-hygiene compliance rates over 97%, more than double the national average.
One BIOVIGIL client reported a 15% reduction in healthcare-acquired infections (HAI’s) and an overall compliance rate of 96% during a 120-day trial implementation across three units during which 181,080 observations were logged.
“Hospitals have been trying to solve the problem of hand-hygiene compliance for a long time,” said Kevin Wittrup, CEO of BIOVIGIL Hygiene Technologies. “Our badge provides the cutting-edge reminder and reassurance functions that have a proven impact on hand-hygiene awareness and compliance.”
For free white papers on how to choose an automated hand hygiene compliance system or how the BIOVIGIL system increases compliance, please visit http://www.biovigilsystems.com/white-papers/
About BIOVIGIL
BIOVIGIL Hygiene Technologies, LLC is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Developing effective and compelling hygiene technologies is our sole business focus. Our company differentiates itself from competitive solutions with a number of patents, which are unique to our product use-case and system solutions for hand hygiene detection and reporting. BIOVIGIL’s patented technology can be easily deployed in any circumstance where monitoring and compliance to hand hygiene policies are essential to protecting, or improving patient and/or staff safety. For more information visit http://www.biovigilsystems.com.