By Healthcare Facilities Today

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - DebMed®, creator of the world's first electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring system based on the World Health Organization's (WHO's) "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene," today announced a collaborative partnership with Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee, IL.  The 325-bed health system, which serves more than five counties across Illinois, has implemented the DebMed GMS™ (Group Monitoring System) to enhance patient safety, ensure healthcare quality and further support its goal of eliminating hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) through automated electronic hand hygiene monitoring.

HAIs are the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they are responsible for 99,000 deaths per year and result in up to $45 billion in annual healthcare costs.  The DebMed GMS helps to increase hand hygiene compliance, which can directly lead to a reduction in HAIs and associated healthcare costs, through its unique ability to provide real-time feedback on hand hygiene behavior.

"We feel the move to electronic monitoring for hand hygiene will bring us to the next level of patient safety, and indeed have already seen improvement of hand hygiene compliance, increasing at rates of 23 percent and 32 percent in the initial pilot units," said Dr. John V. Jurica, Sr. Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Riverside.  "Patient safety is of utmost importance at Riverside, so we see the adoption of this cutting-edge technology as a key component to achieving our overall quality goals."

Recognized as a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence™ in 2012 by HealthGrades, Riverside Medical Center is among the top 5 percent of hospitals nationwide for clinical performance.  Riverside has been a recognized leader in patient care and has received several five-star ratings and Specialty Excellence Award distinctions from HealthGrades for its Cardiac, Orthopedic, Neurosciences, Gastrointestinal and Critical Care service areas.  

By implementing the DebMed GMS system, Riverside has strengthened its commitment to patient safety by reducing the number of HAIs and improving infection prevention practices based on the electronic monitoring of hand hygiene using the WHO's guidelines.  The WHO's "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene" is a higher clinical standard than the more commonly based practice of staff cleaning hands only before and after patient care.

In addition to following the WHO guidelines, the DebMed GMS is automated, highly accurate and provides group monitoring, which encourages higher compliance by monitoring the group instead of individuals.  Group monitoring is recognized by infection preventionists as being more effective than other monitoring systems that track individuals' actions and can be seen by staff as punitive or an invasion of privacy.  The DebMed GMS also provides such supporting tools as staff meeting facilitation guides and visual reminders to help enable positive behavior change and ultimately create a safer environment for the patient.

"DebMed is excited to support Riverside in their quest to provide the best possible patient care to their patients," said Paul Alper, Vice President Strategy and Business Development, DebMed.

About DebMed® 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) is the world's first group monitoring system to report hand hygiene compliance rates in real-time based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene" and to date has recorded more than 28 million hand hygiene events.  The electronic monitoring 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).  It is the first study aimed at reducing healthcare-associated infections in pediatric long-term care facilities by improving staff compliance with hand hygiene guidelines.  Deb is the first hand hygiene company in the world to provide actionable information along with its hand hygiene products to help drive best practices and improved outcomes for patients worldwide.

For more information on the study or DebMed, visit www.debmed.com.