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What you can't see in the air can hurt you

Hospital Safety Insider, January 14, 2016

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A major concern in any hospital or clinical environment is the potential for patients to acquire an infection after being admitted to the hospital. These are defined as nosocomial infections, also referred to as hospital-acquired infections (HAI).

These infections cause many adverse health effects to patients and staff and cost billions of dollars in treatment. The Institute of Medicine reported that HAIs cause approximately 88,000 deaths annually-one every six minutes-and cost an estimated $4.5 billion per year. New government and Medicare regulations require statistical reports of HAIs by hospitals. Readmissions are being looked at very closely, and Medicare will pay less or nothing at all for readmission costs due to HAIs

In the above guest column, Tom Salamone, director of healthcare services with Telgian Corporation in Tempe, Arizona, discusses airborne infection risks in hospital and how proper engineering practices can help cut down on your facility's risk.

This is an excerpt from the monthly healthcare safety resource Briefings on Hospital Safety. Subscribers can read the rest of the article here. Non-subscribers can find out more about the journal, its benefits, and how to subscribe by clicking here.

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