Know Outsourced Vendors to Reduce Healthcare Infections

Hospital-acquired infections are one of the leading causes of death in the United States.

HOUSTON—According to the latest available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4% of patients acquire an infection while hospitalized, with as many as 75,000 dying each year because of it. In fact, according to The Center for Health Design, hospital-acquired infections, or nosocomial infections, are one of the leading causes of death in the United States and typically affect patients whose immune systems are compromised. Nosocomial infections are transmitted in hospitals through three main environmental routes—air, surface contact and water. Airborne infections are spread when dust and pathogens are released during hospital renovation and construction activities, and due to contamination and malfunction of the hospital ventilation system, GlobeSt.com learns.

What if a healthcare facility could be designed and managed in a way that helps to control and reduce healthcare-associated infections? More than just a daydream, the thought is a clinical goal and business necessity for the leaders of the nation’s hospitals and health systems, according to JLL Healthcare Solutions. The pressure to control and reduce healthcare-acquired infections is coming at hospitals and health systems from all directions: for one, the demand for performance transparency. In 2011, the government started requiring hospitals to report infections to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and post them on a government website as part of the Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.