A new campaign initiated by the New Hampshire Commission on Healthcare Quality Assurance aims to achieve 100 percent compliance with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for hand hygiene.
The campaign, called “High Five for a Healthy NH,” is bringing together all licensed facilities, including ASCs and hospitals, in the state to participate. The facilities' CEOs were asked to commit their dedication to the campaign in writing, says Sue Majewski, the chief operating officer for the Bedford (N.H.) Ambulatory Surgical Center and an active member of quality initiatives in the state.
“While surgical centers have extremely low infection rates, one infection is one too many,” Ms. Majewski says. “Our goal is to get to zero infections, and ensuring proper hand hygiene throughout our facility has become a priority for our surgical center.”
Ms. Majewski notes that, according to the CDC, approximately two million Americans develop hospital infections every year, which adds an estimated $5 billion to the nation’s healthcare bill. The most common germs that are spread through hand-to-hand contact include the common cold, flu, food-related illnesses and GI disorders, and the combination of flu and pneumonia is the eighth-leading cause of death among Americans.
“Simple, proper handwashing would significantly reduce these infections, yet studies have shown compliance rates generally leave much room for improvement,” she says.
The “High Five” component of the campaign speaks to the five “fingers,” or pillars, of best practice of the program:
1. Leadership commitment. The highest level of organization leaders (i.e. CEO, board of trustees/directors) commits the organization and its resources to the campaign and its goal of 100 percent compliance with hand hygiene.
2. Availability/convenience of products. Hand hygiene supplies and products must be made as accessible as possible. These include a waterless hand sanitizer and hand washing sinks with appropriate soaps and paper towels.
3. Hand hygiene training and competency. All new and current patient care staff members and physicians will be trained in hand hygiene and required to demonstrate competency in hand hygiene.
4. Measurement. Observations of hand hygiene compliance will be done at the point-of-care using a uniform measurement process. Observations will be done by trained observers.
5. Feedback and accountability. Organizational leaders know what their overall institutional hand hygiene compliance rate is and areas in need of improvement.
“A committee selected the key issues they believed were necessary for a comprehensive approach to hand hygiene,” says Shawn LaFrance, executive director of the Foundation for Healthy Communities in Concord, N.H. “We realized that we had five components and someone suggested the five fingers to go along with the focus on the hand.”
Facilities not located in New Hampshire can improve their hand hygiene compliance efforts by incorporating the five fingers into their operations, following the examples of New Hampshire ASCs and utilizing tools provided on the “High Five” Web site.
“Hand hygiene surveillance should become a routine practice in surgical centers, to increase awareness,” Ms. Majewski says. “The High Five program provides tools for surgical centers to use for staff and patient education. We brought in an infection control specialist to train all staff in hand hygiene, once again increasing awareness. We have also placed patient and visitor hand hygiene stations at every entrance to a patient care area.”
Note: View the CDC’s hand hygiene guidelines.