DebMed Empowers Nurse Leaders to Take an Active Role to Reduce 'Never Events'

"Empowering Leaders, Igniting Change" is the theme for this year's American Organization for Nursing Executives (AONE) meeting. Thousands of nursing leaders from across the country are preparing to gather in Phoenix, Ariz. April 15-18, 2015 for the annual meeting. DebMed® will be educating attendees on best practices for clinical hand hygiene and the newest tools to improve healthcare worker hand hygiene compliance. Compliance with the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for hand hygiene plays a vital role in reducing "never events" such as hospital-associated infections, defined by the National Quality Forum (NQF) as "serious, preventable, and costly medical errors." By leveraging sophisticated data analytics tools, the DebMed portfolio of solutions has enabled healthcare organizations around the world to prompt a change in hand hygiene behavior to reduce the spread of deadly and costly infections.

In late 2014, new financial penalties from the CMS were announced as part of the Hospital-acquired Conditions (HAC) Reduction Program. Hospitals with "never events" rates above the national average now face penalties impacting their total Medicare reimbursement. To date, 721 hospitals have been penalized under this new program. The vigilance of nursing executives and frontline nursing staff is key to reducing "never events."

"Nurse executives are indispensable champions of patient safety, and can play a significant role in helping organizations increase hand hygiene compliance, which has a tremendous impact on reducing  'never events' such as hospital-acquired infections," says Heather McLarney, vice president of DebMed North America. "Advances in technology such as electronic monitoring of hand hygiene compliance can ultimately lead to an improved culture of safety for the entire healthcare organization."

DebMed is the healthcare program of the Deb Group. The DebMed program offers innovative hand hygiene products, electronic monitoring technology, and improvement tools to support hand hygiene compliance. The DebMed® GMS™ (Group Monitoring System), winner of the 2013 Frost & Sullivan Hand Hygiene Solutions New Product Innovation Award, reports hand hygiene compliance rates based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene" and, to date, has recorded more than 65 million hand hygiene events. The system is being utilized in a four-year, multi-site research project being conducted by the Columbia University School of Nursing and funded by a $1.2 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Source: Deb Group