HEALTHCARE-ACQUIRED INFECTIONS (HAI’S) ARE THE 7TH LARGEST CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE UNITED STATES
Patients are admitted to the hospital to receive medical treatment, get well and recover. Yet, every year in the United States over 2 million people contract a hospital-acquired infection.
Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), also known as Hospital-acquired infections and nosocomial infections, are infections that patients can get while receiving medical treatment for another condition in a healthcare facility.
The HAIs paradox is a major threat to patient safety. More than half of all HAIs occur outside of the intensive care unit, and it is estimated that HAIs affect 5 to 10 percent of hospitalized patients in the U.S. every year, resulting in 75,000 deaths (2) and an estimated $20 billion in healthcare costs. Antibiotic resistance not only increases the frequency and mortality associated with infections, but it also contributes substantially to rising costs of care, resulting from prolonged hospital stays and the administration of more expensive drugs (3). If hospitals eliminated surgical site infections, they would see an increase in revenue of more than $2 million a year (4).
Contrarily to what might be inferred from this alarming data, HAIs are preventable. Research shows that when healthcare facilities take specific steps to prevent them, rates of targeted Hospital-Acquired Infections can decrease by more than 70% percent. (5)
Developing a cubicle curtain cleaning and/or replacement policy is one of the actions that can be taken to decrease HAIs rates.
Healthcare staff and patients frequently touch privacy curtains before, during, and aftercare encounters, thus promoting the transfer of bacteria pathogens. (6)
Cubicle curtains rank as the sixth most touched surface in the hospital room. Research shows that 42 percent of privacy curtains are contaminated with vancomycin-resistant enterococci, 22 percent with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and 4 percent Clostridium difficile (7); nonetheless, since the cleaning process is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, cubicle curtains get washed very rarely, thus compromising patient safety.
On The Right Track®’s quick-change system for textile cubicle curtains, disposable cubicle curtains, and shower curtains allows to replace them more regularly and at a lower cost, while strategically optimizing patient throughput.
SOURCES:
1. Prevention of Healthcare-Associated Infections, Am Fam Physician. 2014 Sep 15;90(6):377-382.
2. Multistate Point-Prevalence Survey of HealthCare–Associated Infections, N Engl J Med 2014;370:1198-208.
3. Epidemiology of drug resistance: implications for a post-antimicrobial era. Cohen ML Science. 1992 Aug 21; 257(5073):1050-5.
4. Health care-associated infections: a meta-analysis of costs and financial impact on the US health care system, JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Dec 9-23;173(22):2039-46.
5.CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) 2001 Mar;60(8):243-48
6. Hospital Privacy Curtains are Frequently and Rapidly Contaminated with Potentially Pathogenic Bacteria, Am J Infect Control. 2012 Dec;40(10):904-6
7.Contamination of Hospital Curtains With Healthcare-Associated Pathogens, Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2008 Nov;29(11):1074-6
