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Where can we find benchmark data for observation rates on how often hospital staff use alcohol-based products to wash their hands? What kinds of measures can we use to demostrate to surveyors that we are looking at this?

Accreditation Connection, July 2, 2004

As an infection control professional, we look at benchmarking such as the National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance System (NNIS), through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), says Renee M. Patterson, CSP, infection control manager at Ingham Regional Medical Center in Lansing, MI, and co-author the Infection Control Coordinator's Toolkit: Questions, Games, and Other Ideas for IC Awareness and JCAHO Compliance published by HCPro. There is no benchmarking system like that for hand hygiene at this time.

However, my best recommendation would be to read the CDC hand-hygiene guidelines. They offer course reference studies about national hand-hygiene rates based on different types of studies and different types of monitoring. It's good to go through your JCAHO customer service representative to see if they have different methods of benchmarking, as well.

I strongly encourage you to keep your ear to the ground on this, because there are some cutting-edge programs coming out on hand hygiene. These will help infection control professionals with monitoring and different types of active compliance.

It's hard to sell to staff on why we are monitoring hand hygiene. I never leave a training program without reminding our staff that hand hygiene remains the single most effect method for preventing the spread of infection. The more we drive that home with data and in-house studies and say, 'this is what we are doing, and this is where we were, and this is where we are now,' it's showing compliance. It shows that you are working towards improvement.

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