Last week, Kimberly-Clark Health Care announced the four recipients of the second-annual HAI Watchdog Awards, created to recognize the efforts of healthcare professionals working together to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).
According to Alex Hodges, senior director of global strategic marketing for Kimberly-Clark Health Care’s surgical and infection prevention products, the awards program, which is an initiative of the HAI Watchdog Community, facilitates the sharing of best practices among clinicians and recognizes four exceptional participants with an educational grant of $1,500. HAIs are the fourth largest killer annually in the country and about one in every 20 patients will contract an HAI each year.
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“Kimberly-Clark has been very committed to preventing HAIs through prevention. We have also gone international with our awards, which we’re very proud of. We want to help clinicians and the hospitals they work in sharing their best practices around preventing HAIs, which we see as a huge human and financial cost to the healthcare system,” said Hodges. “We asked all interested hospitals on a national basis to submit their best practices, and this year we were proud to have an increase over the prior year. Twenty hospitals this year submitted their best practices. We have a panel that reviews those submissions blindly and selects the award winners in a number of different categories.”
The 2011 Watchdog Award winners demonstrated measureable results in the area of infection control and address a range of issues including ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
“The human cost of HAIs is significant, and secondarily the financial cost is astronomical as well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published statistics that showed that (depending on the set of statistics) HAIs cost 6.5 to 45 billion a year for the 1.7 million infections that occur annually. Of those 1.7 million infections, there are 99,000 mortalities a year, which is quite an astonishing statistic,” said Hodges.
The Clinician’s Choice category recognizes education and awareness programs with non-measureable results, and the winner was selected by online public voting of fellow healthcare professionals, according to Hodges.
[See also: HAIs add millions to health system costs, harm patients]
“We want our reach to expand to much more than the 20 hospitals and we’re committed to getting there so more hospitals will want to participate and share their success stories,” he continued. “The awards give us an unique opportunity to share best practices from one hospital to another.”
Panel Judged Entries:
Fewer than 300 beds:
· Mary Black Memorial Hospital, Spartanburg, S.C. - After having a VAP rate above the national average for two consecutive years, the ICU nurses and respiratory therapists developed a “Ventilator Bundle Monitor” form and protocol to effectively monitor mechanically ventilated patients. The new regimen and requirements led to only one VAP incident in 2011.
More than 300 beds:
· Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Mo. - To combat the high rate and increased risk of CLABSI in its surgical intensive care unit, the hospital formed an ICU multi-disciplinary committee and developed a daily central line checklist of best practices. The hospital committee also standardized documentation, educational programming, hand hygiene and compliance checks. As a result, the hospital reduced its CLABSI rate by 90 percent, and achieved a zero percent Clostridium difficile rate.
Healthcare System:
· Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, Houston, Texas - In the quest to improve patient care, the hospital developed a campaign to “Zero in on MRSA” by implementing proven best practices gradually throughout the facility. Using the concepts of ownership, emphasis and reinforcement, as well as investments in technology and staff, the center’s 15 in-patient units reported zero MRSA infections after one year.
Clinician’s Choice:
· Hallmark Health System, Medford, Mass. - In an effort to reduce incidents of CLABSI infection, the hospital system commissioned a taskforce to develop educational programs, implement best practices and improve performance by learning from previous deficiencies. The goal of the system is to provide the necessary foundation for the organization to achieve and maintain infection rates of zero.