Maryland Organizations Collaborate To Reduce Healthcare-Associated Infections

The Maryland Patient Safety Center's Clean Collaborative joined 17 acute care hospitals, three long-term care facilities, and four ambulatory surgical centers to help reduce healthcare-associated infection (HAI) rates across the state, say Science Direct reports.

According to the organization’s website, over the past decade, there has been a growing body of evidence suggesting that contamination of environmental surfaces throughout healthcare facilities plays an important role in the transmission of key healthcare-associated pathogens.

The Clean Collaborative’s goals for the recent partnership project included:
• Identifying best management practices (BMPs) for cleaning and disinfecting surface areas
• Educating and promoting BMPs via webinars, factsheets, and a scholarly paper
• Improving the cleanliness of the facility
• Reducing incidence of facility acquired MRSA, VRE and C. diff

During the project, participants were asked to implement and validate BMPs utilizing a Clean Collaborative-approved verification technology. Participants collected quantitative data on a monthly basis for one year. The Clean Collaborative project team then collected, analyzed and graphically depicted the data to identify trends regarding the cleanliness of high-touch areas and levels of facility acquired MRSA, VRE and C.diff.

As a result of the partnership, 88 percent of participating healthcare facilities achieved the program goal of a 10 percent HAI reductions in relative light units.

Participating facilities also achieved a 14.2 percent decrease in C. diff rates compared to a 5.9 decrease among non-participating Maryland facilities.

The Collaborative unexpectedly also found that window sills in patient rooms, which are not considered a high-touch surface, were observed to have higher levels of biofilm.