Infection control and hospital epidemiology : the official journal of the Society of Hospital Epidemiologists of America
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Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol · Aug 2014
Cost analysis of strategies to reduce blood culture contamination in the emergency department: sterile collection kits and phlebotomy teams.
Blood culture collection practices that reduce contamination, such as sterile blood culture collection kits and phlebotomy teams, increase up-front costs for collecting cultures but may lead to net savings by eliminating downstream costs associated with contamination. The study objective was to compare overall hospital costs associated with 3 collection strategies: usual care, sterile kits, and phlebotomy teams. ⋯ EDs with high blood culture contamination rates should strongly consider evidence-based strategies to reduce contamination. In addition to improving quality, implementing a sterile collection kit or phlebotomy team strategy is likely to result in net cost savings.
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Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol · Aug 2014
An economic model: value of antimicrobial-coated sutures to society, hospitals, and third-party payers in preventing abdominal surgical site infections.
While the persistence of high surgical site infection (SSI) rates has prompted the advent of more expensive sutures that are coated with antimicrobial agents to prevent SSIs, the economic value of such sutures has yet to be determined. ⋯ Our results suggest that switching to triclosan-coated sutures from the uncoated sutures can both prevent SSIs and save substantial costs for hospitals, third-party payers, and society, as long as efficacy in preventing SSIs is at least 10% and SSI risk is at least 10%.
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Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol · Aug 2014
Changes in healthcare-associated Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections after the introduction of a national hand hygiene initiative.
Interventions that prevent healthcare-associated infection should lead to fewer deaths and shorter hospital stays. Cleaning hands (with soap or alcohol) is an effective way to prevent the transmission of organisms, but rates of compliance with hand hygiene are sometimes disappointingly low. The National Hand Hygiene Initiative in Australia aimed to improve hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers, with the goal of reducing rates of healthcare-associated infection. ⋯ The intervention was associated with reduced infection rates in most states. The failure in 2 states may have been because those states already had effective initiatives before the national initiative's introduction or because infection rates were already low and could not be further reduced.
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Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol · Aug 2014
Frequency of interactions and hand disinfections among anesthesiologists while providing anesthesia care in the operating room: induction versus maintenance.
We evaluated the behaviors of anesthesiologists during induction and maintenance of anesthesia. Contacts with surfaces occurred a mean (±standard error) of 154.8 ± 7.7 and 60 ± 3.1 times per hour during induction and maintenance, respectively (P < .0001). Hand hygiene events were 1.8 ± 0.27 per hour during induction versus 1.19 ± 0.27 during maintenance (P = .018).