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The Impact of Infections in Seniors Care
The cost of an infection or outbreak in a Senior Living facility can be both costly and deadly. The expenses often transcend the monetary value of treating it. Resident and Staff safety is an important factor to consider.
“Over 1.5 million people live in 16,000 nursing homes in the USA and experience an average of 2 million infections a year…Emerging infections and antibiotic-resistant organisms in an institutional environment where there is substantial antimicrobial overuse and the population is older, frailer and sicker, create unique challenges for infection control.”
Antibiotics – Consider what it costs to treat one infection from an antibiotic’s perspective. Now imagine treating an infection that has spread throughout the home or the impact Antimicrobial Organisms (ARO’s) can have within the Seniors population within a home. HealthConnex offers Clients the ability to track treatments associated with infections and coming-soon Antimicrobial Stewardship reporting.
“Antimicrobial resistance is one of our most serious health threats…Antibiotic-resistant infections add considerable and avoidable costs to the already overburdened healthcare system. In most cases, antibiotic-resistant infections require prolonged and/or costlier treatments, extend hospital stays, necessitate additional doctor visits and healthcare use, and result in greater disability and death compared with infections that are easily treatable with antibiotics.”
Hand Hygiene – The cost of poor Hand Hygiene within facilities has a lasting impact on Seniors living in Long-Term Care. Hand Hygiene is often discussed as the number one leading infection prevention and control method in Healthcare settings. Hand Hygiene is a cost effective and simple way to manage infectious diseases from spreading throughout facilities. Our innovative product offers criteria-based metrics that analyze Hand Hygiene audits for effectiveness based on the duration of the observation. Furthermore our education programs with our auditing app have led to improvement of hand washing by staff inside care homes across Canada by over 50%.
“The single most important aspect of an infection prevention and control program is hand hygiene. While guidelines have been published on hand hygiene, compliance among HCWs remains well below 50%… A study in a Taiwan (Nursing Homes) showed that nursing assistants had significantly more knowledge and better compliance after hand hygiene training.”
PPE – In addition to weighing the price of treating an infection with reimbursement, facilities face costs associated with personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep their staff and other patients safe. Ensuring staff are using the appropriate PPE is vital to reducing infection spread. HealthConnex is introducing a new PPE audit Application in Q2 2021. The audit application will provide the user with the ability to monitor PPE compliance and usage, identify areas for quality improvement (education) and analyze data across units.
Outcomes – Poor clinical outcomes, such as hospital readmission, can impact a facilities ability to provide the best care needed by residents. What’s more, public health inspections that fail infection control and antimicrobial stewardship ratings are met with heavy fines, especially if they have prior penalties. HealthConnex has been proven to reduce the spread of infections within senior living homes by alerting staff of suspected cases, highlighting infection case trends on a visual floor plan, and keeping all data in one safe and easy-to-use place.
“Infections in (Nursing Home) residents have been associated with adverse clinical outcomes, including high rates of morbidity and mortality, rehospitalization, prolonged hospital stay and substantial healthcare expenses.”
