Children’s hospitals have many priorities. Bolstering the pediatric workforce has been a major topic of concern for hospitals in recent years, as has been preventing the spread of infection; even with COVID-19 on the decline, hospitals spend millions of dollars a year combating the spread of C.diff and other infections. Protecting the mental health of their young patients — as well as the mental health of those patients’ families — is also proving to be a challenge.
With so much on their plate, children’s hospitals are increasingly turning to new solutions and technology to streamline processes and address some of these issues. BioVigil, an electric hand hygiene monitoring system, is one of the solutions that has proven itself useful in healthcare settings, including pediatric hospitals.
BioVigil uses a user-worn badge and a gentle reminder sequence to prompt hand hygiene, and collects data that can be used for hand hygiene auditing and more informed decision making. This has been proven to significantly reduce infection and cross-contamination and improve hand hygiene compliance.
With the help of BioVigil, our pediatric hospital clients are preventing costly infection outbreaks and staff shortages through hand hygiene compliance, while also providing peace of mind for patients and their families.
Here are four benefits of using BioVigil in children’s hospitals:
1. Improve emotional wellbeing for patients and family
Families are understandably overwhelmed when their child is hospitalized. One of the many concerns parents have is that hospital staff are following safety guidelines, including hygiene procedures. With BioVigil, patients and their families can see staff members’ hand hygiene status on their user-worn badge. Even if a family member has to step away from the room, they can be reassured knowing that BioVigil will prompt users and ensure that hygiene procedures are in place and being followed. This gives them one less thing to worry about in a highly stressful situation and provides a better healthcare experience.
As one children’s hospital client remarked, “The real bonus is the visual reminder of lighted red, yellow and green hands that remind everyone that we are doing all we can to provide a safe environment. The children love the colors and parents are reassured when we walk in the room that “green is clean”.
2. Improve hand hygiene compliance
Improving hand hygiene compliance is one of the most simple ways to prevent costly outbreaks of healthcare associated infections (HAIs). To do this, hospitals can complete a hand hygiene audit, which will provide valuable data that can be analyzed to uncover ways to improve compliance. This helps hospitals make more informed decisions about infection prevention.
Unfortunately, these hand hygiene audits are traditionally a challenge for hospitals to conduct, especially when performing this task manually. Collecting and compiling data can be time-intensive, and manual audits are flawed and prone to human error.
When using BioVigil, however, your children’s hospital can easily collect thousands of observations each month. With BioVigil, you can capture 100 observations per bed, per day.
Not only does BioVigil collect this data, it also presents it in a configurable dashboard that makes it simple to track compliance and optimize clinical workflow.
3. Reduce infections
As we mentioned, hand hygiene is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of healthcare associated infections (HAIs) in hospitals, but there are many barriers to hand hygiene compliance, including high workloads and understaffing, forgetfulness, and inaccessible hand hygiene supplies.
Hand hygiene audits and a reminder like BioVigil has been proven to improve compliance and help reduce HAIs. San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital, for example, was able to increase hand hygiene compliance from 65% to 92% using BioVigil’s hand hygiene audit tool; after six months they saw a 55% reduction in reported C. diff cases.
BioVigil has also been shown to reduce other HAIS, such as CAUTI and CLABSI. Outcomes for BioVigil include:
- 45% reduction in CLABSI and CAUTI
- 60% reduction in C. diff rates
- Reduction in overall HAIs by up to 83%
4. Help prevent staff shortages
Preventing staff shortages is a major concern for pediatric hospitals. Outbreaks of illness among staff is one of the biggest culprits when it comes to unplanned staff absences, creating gaps that can be difficult for supervisors to fill and putting more strain on remaining staff.
An automated hand hygiene compliance system like BioVigil has been associated with decreased employee absenteeism in healthcare settings. For example, BioVigil was used in the ER at Lutheran Medical Center, a 249-bed, acute care, community hospital in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. During the intervention period, the average monthly hand hygiene compliance rate was 94% and the mean number of monthly sick call hours was reduced by 4.6 hours per month after implementation.
Although staff may be reluctant to implement another step into their routine, the BioVigil badge is unobtrusive and easy to use — it won’t interfere with providing clinical care.
Want to learn more? Download our whitepaper on using BioVigil technology to improve hand hygiene compliance and awareness.