Contact tracing is an important strategy for controlling disease. Hospitals that can quickly identify who was exposed, where they went, and who they interacted with can cut down on transmission and significantly slow the spread of costly infections.
Unfortunately, many hospitals and healthcare settings still rely on manual efforts to contact trace, which can be time-intensive and prone to error. These gaps make it harder for hospitals to make informed decisions about infection prevention and put both staff and patients at risk.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic highlights just how critical timely intervention is for individual hospitals and the overall public health. With that in mind, many healthcare settings have begun introducing new technology into their contact tracing processes to ensure they are getting the most accurate data as quickly as possible. These electronic solutions can help track and prevent the spread of infection, provide time-saving reports to hospital administration, and provide peace of mind for hospital staff.
In this post we’ve broken down the basics and benefits of contact tracing, and how an electronic solution can help collect and make the most of your data.
What is contact tracing?
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “Contact tracing is an effective disease control strategy that involves identifying cases and their contacts then working with them to interrupt disease transmission. This includes asking cases to isolate and contacts to quarantine at home voluntarily.”
Why is contact tracing important?
According to the World Health Organization, “People in close contact with someone who is infected with a virus, such as the Ebola or COVID virus, are at higher risk of becoming infected themselves, and of potentially further infecting others. Closely watching these contacts after exposure to an infected person will help the contacts to get care and treatment, and will prevent further transmission of the virus.”
How does contact tracing work?
According to the CDC, contact tracing begins with a patient with “suspected or confirmed infection” and reaching out to anyone they may have had close contact with when infectious. Those contacts are then educated and supported so they understand how to monitor for symptoms and act in a way that will prevent them from potentially infecting others.
In the case of potential exposure to COVID-19, for example, contacts are encouraged to distance themselves from others for 14 days while monitoring for symptoms such as fever, cough, and shortness of breath.
How far back does contact tracing go?
Contact tracing usually begins two days prior to showing symptoms.
How long does contact tracing take?
How long contact tracing takes will depend on how quickly healthcare staff can identify who and for how long they were exposed, and then contact those who have been exposed to disease and their close contacts. Delays in contact tracing and reaching exposed individuals can delay quarantines or testing and put more people at risk.
Benefits of electronic contact tracing
Benefits of electronic contact tracing include:
- Automatically and accurately tracing who was exposed and for how long, and where they went
- Replacing time-consuming manual tracking that can create costly delays
- Providing peace of mind for hospital staff
- Optimizing workflows like nurse rounding
- Saving time on reporting for hospital administrators
Hospitals and other healthcare settings are increasingly relying on electronic solutions so they can access these benefits and cut down on transmission of COVID-19 and other healthcare-associated infections; a tool like BioVigil, for example, has been shown to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) up to 83%.
1. See who was exposed, for how long, and where they went
One of the advantages of an electronic solution like BioVigil is that it is more technology driven and automates the most critical aspects of contact tracing. With BioVigil, members of the staff wear a badge that tracks movement from room to room and provides a gentle reminder sequence to increase hand hygiene compliance. For example, if a patient was diagnosed with COVID, we can look back and see who went to that patient’s room and for how long they were there, including how many people were in a particular unit. Nurses and techs are usually assigned to a particular unit, but doctors typically aren’t, so if infection went from one to another we can look at employee classes and see how it could have been spread.
2. Replaces the need for manual contact tracing
Electronic contact tracing can replace and automate manual methods. Electronic tracking is faster and more accurate than doing it manually, and demands less work of hospital staff. The more quickly hospitals can identify and contact exposed staff and patients, the more they will be able to limit transmission by having them quarantine or test as soon as possible.
3. Provide peace of mind for hospital staff
Similarly, electronic contact tracing provides a level of comfort by alerting hospital staff to exposure and allowing them to test earlier. This early testing can lessen stress by verifying whether or not they are sick and quarantining them as quickly as possible, if needed, to prevent further transmission to their co-workers, family, and friends.
4. Optimize workflows like nurse rounding
In addition to contact tracing, solutions like BioVigil offer workflow optimization to review and improve processes like nurse rounding. If every patient should be rounded at least once, once an hour, the system can track whether every patient was seen every hour, who was missed, and how much time was spent with each patient. Food delivery and housekeeping can similarly be tracked with our user-worn badges, and ensure that, for example, staff are spending enough time in each room cleaning. The real-time location services transfer data at the end of the shift.
5. Save time on reporting for hospital administrators
Hospital administrators who need to report on COVID-19 and other HAI outbreaks can access real-time data and reports when contact tracing is done electronically. BioVigil, for example, compiles aggregate and individual HHC data into easy to read reports and dashboards. This saves valuable time and frees up hospital administrators to focus on other efforts.
Get the benefits of contact tracing with BioVigil
Contact tracing can be used with BioVigil’s hand hygiene monitoring solution to prevent the spread of infection by looking back at contact history and implementing better hand hygiene practices. For example, if you can contact trace in the chain of a hospital setting (like a particular unit) and there are 25 beds, you can see how a hand hygiene practice either stopped or didn’t stop the spread of a particular infection. An electronic hand hygiene monitoring solution can contact trace who went to a particular room, and who washed or didn’t wash their hands before going to another room. This is something that can be done on a routine basis. In addition, if an infection or infected person is detected, technology can determine who was in touch with the infection or the infected person.
Additionally, you can also look forward and predict and digitally track potential future infections if you have a contagious patient and want to trace who got in touch with that person, and who of those people were in contact with others. Hospitals usually have 7-10 days of tracing to work with.
These insights are invaluable when contact tracing, understanding how infection spreads, and implementing preventative measures — such as new hand hygiene education, procedures, or protocols — that are tailored to the hospital’s specific barriers to hand hygiene compliance.