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Mike and Joyce speak with Linda Riley, MEd, RN, CIC, Manager, Infection Prevention, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, and with Heather McLarney, DebMed Systems, makers of the GMS hand hygiene monitoring system. Daniel English, the Director of Environmental Services at Cooley Dickinson Hospital joins the conversation to add additional insight about the technology being used at Cooley Dickinson Hospital to increase patient safety.

Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HAIs are responsible for 99,000 deaths per year and result in $35.7 to $45 billion annually in healthcare costs.

Cooley-Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, is a 140-bed acute care hospital, providing patient-centered health care services both at its main campus in Northampton, Mass., and at satellite facilities in Amherst, Easthampton, Florence, Hadley, South Deerfield and Worthington, other locations also in western Massachusetts.

At Cooley Dickinson, 300 affiliated physicians and over 1,600 employees work collaboratively to provide the highest quality of care. This collaboration is at the core of Cooley Dickinson’s goal to consistently exceed the expectations of patients and families and to become a model for how care is delivered at our nation’s community hospitals.

Nationally recognized organizations — the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety and Medical Error Reduction — have designated Cooley Dickinson as a top-performing hospital. Having received the prestigious Healthgrades’ top five-percent patient safety award for four years in a row (2009 – 2012), Cooley Dickinson has been a recognized leader in patient safety and the use of innovative technologies.

With ultraviolet light room disinfection (Xenex), they were able to achieve considerable milestones in 2011, such as a 54 percent reduction is Clostridium difficile infections, a 58 percent reduction in MRSA infections/colonization, and a 65 percent reduction in VRE infections. They have recently implemented a new monitoring system for hand hygiene, the DebMed GMS. Their goal is to reduce the number of HAIs to zero, by improving infection prevention practices based on the data from electronic monitoring of hand hygiene using the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO’s Five Moments for Hand Hygiene is a higher clinical standard than the more commonly based practice of staff cleaning hands only before and after patient care.

The DebMed GMS helps to increase hand hygiene compliance, which can directly lead to a reduction in HAIs and associated healthcare costs, through its unique ability to provide real-time feedback on hand hygiene behavior.