Versus Introduces Automated, Real-Time Hand Hygiene Complianc...( TRAVERSE CITY Mich. June 9 /- Hand Hy...),Health

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich., June 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hand Hygiene Compliance (HHC) is paramount to patient safety and the reduction of hospital acquired infections -- but monitoring adherence to HHC policies has traditionally been done through observation, which is difficult and inaccurate, if not downright impossible. In fact, on their website, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement notes "Experts estimate [emphasis added] that health practitioners comply with recommended hand hygiene procedures less than 50 percent of the time..." and that nearly 2 million patients develop hospital acquired infections each year. Of those, 80,000 will die. The primary culprit? "The contaminated hands of health care workers."

That's a rather bleak outlook, especially when the answer is as simple as WASH YOUR HANDS. The Joint Commission recommends a 90% compliance rate. How does one measure compliance? The 2009 monograph published by the Joint Commission, Measuring Hand Hygiene Adherence: Overcoming the Challenges, provides an estimate that observation audits capture only 0.12% of hand washing opportunities. Versus Technology, Inc. has introduced a Hand Hygiene Compliance Solution to automatically measure instances of both hand hygiene compliance and non-compliance to help hospitals protect patient safety and meet regulatory and internal hand hygiene policies.

The Hand Hygiene Compliance Solution from Versus includes unique Infrared (IR) and RFID badges for caregivers. These small, lightweight badges communicate with similar IR-RFID tags placed on automated soap dispensers. When a badge-wearing staff member approaches the soap dispensing unit, the tag on the dispenser reads the badge, records who is at the hand washing station and when and where the activity is taking place. At the time of hand washing, the caregiver receives an audible acknowledgement that the Versus system has captured th
'/>"/>