Riverside Medical Center, DebMed Announce Partnership to Enhance Patient Safety, Healthcare Quality

DebMed®, creator of an electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring system based on the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, announces a collaborative partnership with Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee, Ill.  The 325-bed health system, which serves more than five counties across Illinois, has implemented the DebMed GMS (Group Monitoring System) to enhance patient safety, ensure healthcare quality and further support its goal of eliminating healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) through automated electronic hand hygiene monitoring.
 
HAIs are the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they are responsible for 99,000 deaths per year and result in up to $45 billion in annual healthcare costs.  The DebMed GMS helps to increase hand hygiene compliance, which can directly lead to a reduction in HAIs and associated healthcare costs, through its unique ability to provide real-time feedback on hand hygiene behavior.
 
We feel the move to electronic monitoring for hand hygiene will bring us to the next level of patient safety, and indeed have already seen improvement of hand hygiene compliance, increasing at rates of 23 percent and 32 percent in the initial pilot units, says Dr. John V. Jurica, senior vice president and chief medical officer at Riverside.  Patient safety is of utmost importance at Riverside, so we see the adoption of this cutting-edge technology as a key component to achieving our overall quality goals.
 
Recognized as a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence in 2012 by HealthGrades, Riverside Medical Center is among the top 5 percent of hospitals nationwide for clinical performance.  Riverside has been a recognized leader in patient care and has received several five-star ratings and Specialty Excellence Award distinctions from HealthGrades for its Cardiac, Orthopedic, Neurosciences, Gastrointestinal and Critical Care service areas. 
 
By implementing the DebMed GMS system, Riverside has strengthened its commitment to patient safety by reducing the number of HAIs and improving infection prevention practices based on the electronic monitoring of hand hygiene using the WHOs guidelines.  The WHOs Five Moments for Hand Hygiene is a higher clinical standard than the more commonly based practice of staff cleaning hands only before and after patient care.
 
In addition to following the WHO guidelines, the DebMed GMS is automated, highly accurate and provides group monitoring, which encourages higher compliance by monitoring the group instead of individuals.  Group monitoring is recognized by infection preventionists as being more effective than other monitoring systems that track individuals actions and can be seen by staff as punitive or an invasion of privacy.  The DebMed GMS also provides such supporting tools as staff meeting facilitation guides and visual reminders to help enable positive behavior change and ultimately create a safer environment for the patient.
 
DebMed is excited to support Riverside in their quest to provide the best possible patient care to their patients, says Paul Alper, vice president of strategy and business development for DebMed.
 
Source: DebMed