The environmental services department is an overlooked "secret weapon" in reducing and preventing hospital-acquired infections, according to an article by Rodney Rohde on the Elsevier website.

Rohde is the director of the clinical laboratory science program in the College of Health Professions of Texas State University.

In a 2013 study of MRSA transmission via healthcare workers published in BMC Infectious Diseases, researchers found that environmental cleaning should be considered an integral component of MRSA infection control in hospitals, the article said.

"Given the previously under-appreciated role of surface contamination in MRSA transmission," the researchers wrote, "this intervention mode can contribute to an effective multiple barrier approach in concert with hand hygiene."

"But it is impractical to view hand-washing programs as a single solution to reducing the high rates of HAIs," Rohde said. "It has been preached before but usually only to the choir: All the hand washing in the world won't do a bit of good if clean hands then immediately come in contact with contaminated surfaces like the ones in the studies above."

Read the blog.