BIOVIGIL System is the Hospital’s Latest Tool in Efforts to Prevent Healthcare Associated Infections
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (March 31, 2016) – White Plains Hospital is the first hospital in the greater New York City metropolitan area to use the innovative BIOVIGIL hand hygiene system to help prevent Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) by ensuring all employees who come into contact with patients have the cleanest hands possible. Now in use throughout the Hospital, the system both monitors hand cleanliness in real time and can track hand hygiene compliance with 99.9% accuracy on a hospital-wide basis – including the Hospital’s Emergency Department, which sees nearly 57,000 visits a year.
Approximately two million patients acquire HAIs in U.S. hospitals every year — and nearly 100,000 people die of them. A significant percentage of these infections are preventable. Effective hand hygiene, which includes hand washing and using alcohol-based hand sanitizer, is the single most powerful method to prevent transmission of infections.
White Plains Hospital employees wear special BIOVIGIL badges that can sense when they have used alcohol-based sanitizer or washed using soap and water. The badges display colors just like a traffic light. Green means “compliant”, yellow means “hygiene reminder” and red means “non-compliant.” The system is easy to understand and lets White Plains Hospital patients immediately know that their healthcare provider has clean hands.
According to Saungi McCalla, MSN, MPH, RN, CIC, Director of Infection Control at White Plains Hospital, “Our goal is 100% hand hygiene compliance, consistent with White Plains Hospital policies. All White Plains Hospital staff are required to ‘wash in, wash out’ upon entering and exiting patient rooms. Doctors, nurses, nurse techs, food service workers, environmental service workers, transporters, physical therapists, radiologists, phlebotomists, pastoral care, and other staff throughout White Plains Hospital are now using the BIOVIGIL system, which helps us enforce the hand hygiene policy at all times.” During a piloting period, the Hopsital collected over 4 million hand hygiene observations and has gone from 84 users of the system to nearly 1,300. BIOVIGIL technology utilizes a simple room sensor, a plug-in base station and a small badge, similar to a standard identification badge. The system is designed to detect and monitor hand washing events and automatically communicate and securely forward compliance information.
About White Plains Hospital
White Plains Hospital is a 292-bed not-for-profit health care organization with the primary mission of providing exceptional acute and preventive medical care to all people who live in, work in or visit Westchester County and its surrounding areas. Centers of Excellence include the White Plains Hospital Cancer Program, The William & Sylvia Silberstein Neonatal & Maternity Center and The Ruth and Jerome A. Siegel Stroke Center. The Hospital’s Flanzer Emergency Department Flanzer Emergency Department is the busiest in Westchester County, seeing nearly 57,000 visits a year. White Plains Hospital performs lifesaving emergency and elective angioplasty in its Joan and Alan Herfort, M.D. Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Marie Promuto Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory . White Plains Hospital also has outpatient medical facilities in Armonk and New Rochelle. The Hospital is fully accredited by the Joint Commission and earned its recognition as a Top Performer for Key Quality Measures® in 2015 and 2013. The Hospital is also an eleven-time winner of the Consumer Choice Award, an honor given to the nation’s top hospitals by the National Research Corporation, and received Magnet® designation in 2012 from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). In 2014 White Plains Hospital received the Outstanding Patient Experience Award from Healthgrades®, given to only 5% of hospitals nationwide. White Plains Hospital is a proud member of the Montefiore Health System. For additional information, visit http://www.wphospital.org.
About BIOVIGIL Healthcare Systems, Inc.
BIOVIGIL Healthcare Systems, Inc. is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Developing effective and compelling hygiene technologies is the company’s sole business focus. BIOVIGIL differentiates itself from competitive solutions by way of a number of patents, which are unique to the product use-case, and system solutions for hand hygiene detection and reporting. BIOVIGIL’s patented technology can be easily deployed in any circumstance where monitoring and compliance to hand hygiene policies are essential to protecting, or improving patient and/or staff safety. For more information, visit http://www.biovigilsystems.com/.
