In a study on the prevention of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), Southern California Hospital at Culver City (SCH) significantly reduced HAIs using an innovative UV-C room and surface disinfection service from Clean Sweep Group, Inc. (CSGI). The study, published in the December 2015 issue of the American Journal of Infection Prevention (AJIC), showed CSGI's contracted service reduced the facility-wide HAI incidence rate by more than 34 percent, including a 46 percent reduction in the rate hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile.
"For the duration of the study, CSGI's service was responsible for maintaining the environmental hygiene intervention, including UV-C technology, implementation protocols, and technicians," says the primary author and SCH's infection prevention director during the study, Nathanael A. Napolitano, MPH.
Leo Williams, CSGI's CEO, comments, "Our services and process helped SCH save lives and reduce cost associated with reducing HAIs. The hospital achieved an ROI within two months of implementing our advanced disinfection process, education protocols and technology."
Mark House, CSGI's EVP of operations says, "Most hospitals are faced with the challenges of disinfecting enough rooms, rapid room turnover, spending capital funds on emitters with no specific implementation strategies, no knowledge of emitter capabilities, no accountability systems, weak safety features, and limited disinfection knowledge by emitter operators. All of these things lead to an ineffective UV program. CSGI removes all of these issues."
"At the point-of-use, Infection Prevention Technologies, LLC UV-C emitters have an advantage over manual cleaning by providing a consistent disinfection result, however there is vast variability in the implementation strategy of these technologies -- hundreds of hospitals are utilizing some form of automated disinfection technology and few are reporting HAI rate reductions," says Cody Haag, CSGI's VP of research development. "Using evidence-based practices identified in epidemiology literature, CSGI operationalized the strategic deployment of UV-C disinfection technology. This allows our technicians to more frequently disinfect critical pathogen transmission points in a hospital with unprecedented accountability during the process."
Source: CSGI
