Andalusia Regional Hospital, a subsidiary of LifePoint Hospitals, recently began testing a hand hygiene compliance system designed to improve hand hygiene compliance and, in turn decrease health care associated infections.

ARH installed nGage™, a point-of-care compliance monitoring device, in a single unit of the hospital in December 2010.

The system is being evaluated for possible use throughout the entire hospital.

“Our hospital will use the data to further understand our processes and improve our systems. We have the best healthcare workers and we want to enhance that with the best technologies”, says Andalusia Regional Hospital chief clinical officer, Melissa Davis, MSN, APN, RN.

The nGage system monitors hand hygiene compliance 24 hours a day, seven days week. Healthc are workers wear badges that are uniquely recognized by control units at soap dispensers throughout the hospital. When the worker enters a room or area where there is a control unit, they are recognized and, upon the completion of a quality hand hygiene event, they are given important, patient-specific information (such as “the patient is at risk for a fall”), general employee information, or employee-specific information (such as stock market reports or sports scores). The messaging creates incentives for healthcare workers at the point of care, improves workflow and creates opportunities for efficiencies while enhancing patient safety and quality of care. In addition to hand hygiene monitoring, Proventix is exploring further nGage capabilities to monitor additional quality events.

nGage was chosen for implementation primarily because of results achieved by other healthcare facilities. Princeton Baptist Medical Center was able to achieve a 22 percent reduction in HAIs across a unit and received the Stories of Success title from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) because of those results. They were selected as one of only two “Tier 1” success stories from across the US.

“The nGage system has already brought a change in atmosphere and hand hygiene behavior to the unit,” says Candie Northey, BSN, RN, infection control practitioner , at Andalusia Regional Hospital. “I don’t think I have been this excited about anything in a long time!”