Germ fighting superheros roam New York City streets

The Association of Professionals for Infection Control (APIC) teamed up with Alliance for Consumer Education (ACE) to launch a new hand hygiene education using two superheros. Ace Clean and Iron Man demonstrated proper hand washing techniques in New York City's Times Square on October 1st.

Video link for the superheros is here

How much extra revenue is infection control making for a hospital?

One of the challenges infection preventionists face is convincing hospital executives the value of their work, in terms of dollars saved for the hospital. In almost every hospital, infection control is considered a cost center. This perception makes it difficult for IPs to obtain new resources and during times of economic hardship, infection control budgets are often ones that get cut first.

SHEA published a guideline on making a business case for infection control that listed concrete steps to help IPs evaluate resource options using economic analysis, which in turn can be presented to hospital executives who are making budget decisions. Dr. Eli Perencevich, who helped write the document, talked about the core concepts at this year's APIC conference.

The idea that I like the best is calculating the additional number of bed-days that become available as a result of good infection prevention. hospitals make money by bringing in new patients. The number of patients a hospital can accomodate is limited by the number of beds available. In addition to calculating cost saved, IPs can also show the revenue generated by reducing infection rates.

SHEA Guideline

APIC Update

There are so many interesting talks at APIC that there is not enough time to digest it all. A couple topics that I want to expand on in later posts (but want to mention in this post) are 1) How IPs can reposition their roles and their department as revenue centers as opposed to cost centers and, 2) Controversies on hand hygiene compliance, and 3) NOLA cuisine.

I will write more about each of these topics in the next few days.

In the mean time, the Vecna team is having a wonderful time. Ron did a celebrity photo shoot with Dr. Peter Pronovost, the author of Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals. The Wheel of Infection at our booth was a big hit with IPs.

Just-in-Time Healthcare

Yesterday's New York Times had an article on the application of Kaizen, or Continuous Performance Improvement (CPI) principles at hospitals to reduce cost and increase efficiency. As a Six Sigma enthusiast, I was excited to see that the same concepts that have been used in manufacturing is making its way into healthcare and hospitals are reaping benefits from CPI practices. Hopefully more hospitals will adopt these principles and that one day we will achieve Just-in-Time Healthcare.

NY Times Article

Finally, I am at the APIC Conference this week and so are many of my fellow bloggers. Come to booth #1107 to meet the bloggers!

APIC’s MRSA Census Coming to Your Hospital

How big of a threat is MRSA to hospitals? The recently released APIC survey attempts to answer just that.

MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is responsible for an estimated 19,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and costs hospitals an additional $60,000 per patient who acquires a MRSA infection in the hospital. In October 2006, APIC conducted the first-ever national MRSA prevalence study and found that 46 out of every 1,000 patients in the study were either infected or colonized with MRSA. The rate was larger than previously estimated and led to several concerted efforts by APIC to combat MRSA. The goal of this year’s survey is to update the study results with the current MRSA prevalence rate. The comparison will help evaluate the impact of recent MRSA prevention measures on MRSA prevalence.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has not yet begun to penalize hospitals with high MRSA infection rates by reducing reimbursement. However, given the current trend that focuses on pay-for-performance, it’s likely that CMS will refuse to pay for preventable MRSA infections in the future.

Therefore, I urge every hospital to participate in this important survey. After all, how do we fight MRSA if we don’t know what kind of problem we are dealing with? The survey results affect the measures and solutions we adopt, the amount of resources we need and receive, the type of care we provide to patients, and the kind of research and innovation that will be necessary to combat the infection.

APIC MRSA Survey