The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly increased awareness of the importance of hand washing, both among health care workers and the public.

To remind care providers of hand hygiene compliance at the point of care, Vitalacy devised a private, tactile reminder – a brief vibration.

Vitalacy has developed the five characteristics of effective hand hygiene monitoring technology to increase hand hygiene compliance.

Verifying and reinforcing hand hygiene compliance is a vital component of the response to infectious disease like coronavirus.

Vitalacy’s electronic hand hygiene monitoring system is the only one on the market that can track hand wash duration, as well as compliance.

According to CDC guidelines, C. diff infections are best prevented by hand hygiene using soap and water rather than hand sanitizers.

To improve patient-provider relationships, we need to help our clinicians find more time. Vitalacy offers three ways to help.

Hospital tend to place blame for adverse events on frontline workers closest to the problem, discouraging them from reporting mistakes.

Complying with hand hygiene protocols incorporating both soap and water and hand rubs is the best way to prevent hospital-acquired infection

To achieve and maintain Magnet status, hospitals must provide evidence of nursing excellence and innovation in the pursuit of quality/safety

A Joint Commission survey found inadequate staffing was cited as the biggest barrier to patient safety. Improving workflow can help.

Digital location and movement mapping gains understanding of caregivers’ workflow and how it can be adjusted to improve patient safety.

Physicians spend more time on “desktop medicine,” such as typing notes into the electronic health record (EHR) than on office visits.

Leapfrog Group added electronic monitoring to its hand hygiene practice standards and plans to score and publicly report by 2020.

Between 10% and 50% of healthcare workers identify that they have been a second victim of an adverse event.

Safety cultures encourage the reporting of adverse events and unsafe conditions. A just and trusting culture can reduce nurse burnout.

Hospitals must prevent "never events", but most don’t have the technology to track frequency or quality of patient monitoring.

By increasing the number of observations, hospitals can achieve a truer measure of compliance and quantitatively reduce HAIs.

Safety cultures should have five elements: informed culture, reporting culture, learning culture, just culture and flexible culture.

Workflow monitoring helps create highly reliable patient safety systems that support providers in performing patient care responsibilities.