From talking to customers across the country, I know that they want a hand hygiene solution that will enable them to meet the Leapfrog Group’s hand hygiene practice standards. The SmartBadge can definitely help them do this, at a competitive price point. “With our SmartBadge, organizations can begin monitoring and measuring compliance right way, giving them a benchmark upon which to improve,” said Vitalacy CEO and Co-Founder Janel Nour-Omid. “They can choose to upgrade to our SmartClip or SmartBand to further spur hand hygiene improvement with real-time reminders at the point of care.”
Healthcare organizations increasingly turning to electronic hand hygiene monitoring
To meet the Leapfrog standards, healthcare organizations must complete 200 observations of hand hygiene opportunities per month per unit, with the observations occurring across all days of the week and all shifts. Because of the difficulty and the inherent bias of doing these observations through direct human monitoring, organizations are increasingly turning to electronic hand hygiene monitoring solutions to meet Leapfrog’s criteria.
With healthcare organizations still recovering financially from COVID-19, I have found that they’re looking for a cost-efficient, yet accurate and effective way of improving hand hygiene compliance, which various research studies have linked to lower healthcare-acquired infection rates (Banks, et al., 2019; Kelly, et al., 2016; Pronovost, et al., 2006)
SmartBadge adds an entry-level, upgradable option to Vitalacy’s monitoring devices
With the SmartBadge added to our product suite, Vitalacy customers now have three hand hygiene monitoring devices to choose from. The SmartBadge, the entry-level option, monitors hand hygiene compliance without requiring daily charging or staff needing to respond to reminders and other kinds of feedback. The SmartBadge quietly does its job by providing compliance data that can serve as the basis for improvement; it’s a great solution for healthcare organizations that want to fulfill Leapfrog requirements while obtaining a baseline measure of across-the-board hand hygiene performance in a cost-efficient way.
Healthcare organizations wishing to add real-time hand wash reminders at the point of care in an effort to further improve their compliance can choose to upgrade to Vitalacy’s more robust SmartClip or SmartBand, which both provide these reminders. Because it fits on the user’s wrist, the SmartBand has the additional capabilities of monitoring hand wash duration via Bluetooth and coaching care providers to extend the time they wash their hands. Vitalacy’s experience with St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children in Queens, New York, showed a correlation between longer hand wash duration and reduced healthcare-acquired infections.
I expect our customers to appreciate the cost flexibility and upgrade options these three devices offer. The SmartBadge serves as a great entry-level solution during a challenging time for healthcare organizations. As we overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic and delve further into efforts to better control or eliminate healthcare-acquired infections, organizations will be able to upgrade into more advanced solutions from Vitalacy, as well.
The SmartBadge is the latest addition to the Vitalacy Patient Safety Platform – a suite of products including hand hygiene compliance monitoring, workflow and nurse rounding monitoring, contact tracing, and a fall risk alert.
Request a demo today to learn more about which of our solutions will work best for you.
References
Banks M, et al. Decreased laboratory-identified Clostridioides difficile Infections with implementation of an electronic hand hygiene monitoring system in a long-term acute care hospital. Open Forum Infectious Diseases, 2019 supplement;6:S425-S425.
Kelly JW, et al: Electronic hand hygiene monitoring as a tool for reducing health care-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection. American Journal of Infection Control, 2016;44:956–957.
Pronovost P, et al: An intervention to decrease catheter-related bloodstream infections in the ICU. New England Journal of Medicine, 2006;355:2725-32.
