Free Solutions from the Center for Transforming Healthcare

Background
Proper hand hygiene is one of the simplest, straightforward essentials to patient-centric health care, but it remains one of the biggest compliance obstacles for organizations everywhere. Joint Commission International (JCI) recognizes this issue, and requires that its accredited organizations comply with International Patient Safety Goal 5, Reduce the Risk of Health Care–Associated Infections, by adopting or adapting currently published and generally accepted hand hygiene guidelines. The two most commonly followed guidelines are to date are those set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

How can a health care organization achieve better hand-hygiene compliance all day, every day? That’s the focus of this issue’s Spotlight on Hand Hygiene Solutions. Solutions have and still are being developed; many are now available for low or no cost.

In December 2008, the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare began work on its first improvement project: addressing failures in hand hygiene. The Center’s Hand Hygiene Project focuses on improving and sustaining hand hygiene compliance. Unfortunately, many infections are transmitted by health care personnel. The Center’s leadership believes that sustained improvement isn’t a simple slogan or campaign; comprehensive, systematic, and sustainable change is the only solution.

JCI, The Joint Commission, and WHO have combined to administer the WHO Collaborating Centre for Patient Safety, which, in tandem with the Commonwealth Fund, and the WHO World Alliance for Patient Safety, has established the High 5s Project. High 5s is a mechanism to implement innovative, standardized operating protocols for five patient safety solutions over five years. This initiative seeks to leverage the implementation of solutions that would have broad impacts in preventing avoidable catastrophic adverse events — death or serious injury — in hospitals. One of those five areas of focus is the promotion of effective hand hygiene practices.

Finally, The Joint Commission—in congress with Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, CDC, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and World Health Organization World Alliance for Patient Safety—worked for the establishment of a Consensus Measurement in Hand Hygiene Project. The result was a comprehensive white paper, Measuring Hand Hygiene Adherence: Overcoming the Challenges, which was designed to address the saying “everything you ever wanted to know about hand hygiene measurement but were afraid to ask.”

With all that in mind, JCInsight presents the following free resources:

Free Solutions from the Center for Transforming Healthcare
► Project facts
► Roadmap to Developing Solutions