Hand Hygiene Compliance Monitoring

Safety is a priority for healthcare facilities, and improving hand hygiene compliance is the most effective measure to reducing the risk of Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) to both patients and healthcare staff. Real-Time Location System (RTLS) technology is an innovative, automatic, and more efficient monitoring tool to help drive true improvement in hand hygiene compliance.

Traditionally, healthcare facilities have measured the hand hygiene compliance of their staff through manual direct observation. However, studies show that this method is labor intensive, expensive, and only accounts for less than 5% of all hand hygiene events. Additionally, the most significant disadvantage is the potential to influence the behavior of those who know they are being observed. This is known as, the Hawthorne Effect and has been proven to cause grossly inflated hand hygiene compliance rates.

CenTrak’s electronic hand hygiene monitoring system captures 100% of hand hygiene events and is deployable as a standalone solution or as part of CenTrak’s Enterprise Location Services™ platform in which data can be viewed at the hospital-, department-, or individual-level. A ClinicalGrade RTLS solution can demonstrate if a healthcare worker washed their hands upon entering a room and again after their interaction with a patient. Failure to comply with hand hygiene protocols will result in a gentle reminder from the staff member’s RTLS-enabled badge. This allows healthcare facilities to audit hand hygiene processes, reduce the spread of infections, improve patient outcomes, and lower costs.

Key Functionality:

• Easily installed battery powered dispenser monitors with cable-free installation
• Mounts to various dispensers, canisters, pumps or sinks
• Embedded sensor option for major dispenser manufacturers
• Generates reports demonstrating compliance to support Joint Commission requirements

Electronic monitoring systems are the most effective and only passive method to aid in increasing hand hygiene compliance. This tool does not require a change in normal hand-washing procedures and it is not subject to human error or reactive bias.

Benefits: 

• Proactively increases compliance with a gentle reminder to staff if needed
• Reduces the number of HAIs
• Reduces treatment costs and length of stay associated with HAIs
• Eliminates time spent doing data entry and building reports to demonstrate compliance
• Identifies where additional interventions are needed through comprehensive analysis tools
• Improves clinical workflow with no change in established hand hygiene protocols

CenTrak staff badges communicate with dispensers to automatically collect hand washing compliance data

Compliance Monitoring Levels

Product Portfolio