Ebola Prompts Desire For Infection Control Tech

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

A new survey shows infection control technology is a top priority in 2015 due to rising hospital acquired infections and the scare of the Ebola outbreak.

A recent survey conducted by Black Book found infection control technology is the number one priority for 2015. The Ebola outbreak and scare combined with the rising number of hospital acquired infections and the consequent CMS crackdown has made hospitals more willing to try new ways to control infections.

“There are an estimated 800,000 healthcare associated infections in US hospitals each year and 75,000 hospital patients with hospital acquired infections die during hospitalizations. 1 in 24 hospital patient every day has at least one hospital acquired infection on any given day of the year,” says Black Book. “Transmission of infections and diseases within hospitals in a normal situation is significant. The threat of a highly infectious, deadly disease among health care workers and inpatients is among the top concern of emergency physicians and nurses, infection control practitioners and epidemiologists.”

According to iHealth Beat, the survey showed 82 percent of hospital leaders with EHR systems said they postponed buying infection-control software because they were waiting for their EHR vendors to develop add-on modules and support systems. In addition, 69 percent of hospitals said they will assess infection-control technology for implementation no later than the second quarter of 2015.

Forty-one percent of hospitals with at least 150 beds said that they regularly use computerized infection control data and real-time surveillance systems, an increase from just 28 percent of such hospitals in 2012. Black Book also discovered 13 percent of hospitals said that while they acknowledge how important an automated infection-control system would be to meet mandatory reporting requirements, the overall return on investment does not yet justify the expense of implementation, particularly because HAI rates have not improved.

“Prolonged and combined outbreaks of any communicable disease or pathogen exposure can lead to the progressive spread of disease with rapidly increasing service demands on staff and supplies can potentially overwhelm the capacity of hospitals and the local health care delivery system at large,” explains Black Book. “To enhance the readiness of the health facilities to cope with the challenges of virus outbreaks or any other emergency or disaster, hospital managers need to ensure the initiation of relevant generic priority action.”