By Healthcare Facilities Today

Environmental cleaning practices were the most significant factor in cutting a Cincinnati hospital's Clostridium difficile (C. diff) incidence rate in half over six months. While treatment with antibiotics is not always successful, adhering to good cleaning and hygiene practices can keep the infections under control, says an article in Housekeeping Solutions.

When Jewish Hospital-Mercy Health hit an incidence rate of 25.27 per 10,000 patients, hospital officials decided they had to get to the bottom of what was going on and reverse the trend. The hospital found its population — primarily elderly patients and also blood and bone marrow transplant patients — is particularly susceptible to C. diff infection.

Here are some of the strategies they employed to get the C. diff infection rate back down at their facility.
- Changing privacy curtains when the patient was discharged and sometimes even during their stay
- Cleaning C. diff patient rooms twice daily
- Dedicating cleaning tools to each room, which are replaced frequently
- Using a real-time adenosine triphosphate (ATP) cleaning, validation and tracking system to gauge need to retrain housekeepers

Other industry best practices for containing C. diff include bagging laundry within the room before transporting it into the hallway, having staff gown up before entering the room and reinforcing hand washing protocols, the article says.

Active C. diff spores are very good at spreading from surface to surface and are very difficult to kill. The chemical of choice for disinfecting surfaces of C. diff is bleach. Accelerated hydrogen peroxide (AHP) products have also found success as an alternative to bleach. In both cases, appropriate dwell times come into play for full effectiveness.  

Beyond chemicals, facilities are pursuing technological ways to prevent C. diff, such as ultra-violet light systems, room foggers and industrial steam cleaners. However, these each pose their own challenges.

Read the article: Part 1, Part 2