Housekeepers, Transporters May 'Inadvertently' Spread Hospital Infection

They're overlooked, under-protected in infection puzzle

PITTSBURGH, March 9, 2010 - One cause of the rampant international hospital-infection epidemic may be
the "inadvertent exposure" of hospital housekeepers and transporters to
antibiotic-resistant "Superbugs" such as MRSA, says TeleTracking Technologies
CEO Anthony Sanzo (www.teletracking.com).

Sanzo, a former health system CEO, was commenting on a recently-released
study which suggests that many of the 48,000 hospital-acquired pneumonia and
sepsis deaths recorded nationwide in 2006 might have been avoided with better
infection control.

A study by Extending the Cure and published in The Archives of Internal
Medicine said pneumonia and sepsis, which can be caused by drug-resistant
microbes such as MRSA, increased U.S. healthcare costs by US$8.1 billion that
year due to protracted hospital stays and treatment.

"Inadvertent exposure" results when hospitals fail to alert environmental
and transport personnel in advance about isolation rooms holding infected
patients. This denies workers the opportunity to protect themselves from
exposure or initiate special cleaning procedures, especially wiping down the
litter and wheelchair with antimicrobial wipes. This can significantly
increase the possibility of wider contamination because the workers continue
about their business without knowing they've been exposed, using equipment
that has not been properly sanitized. The hazard also may extend to the next
patient who occupies a "blocked" room, because the presence of MRSA requires
hospital workers to use specific chemicals and procedures to rid the room and
bed of the microbes.

MRSA is a host organism causing sepsis, a blood infection which produces
multi-system organ failure and is the leading cause of deaths in intensive
care units. Extending the Cure's study said sepsis killed 20 percent of
patients who contracted it after surgery. Pneumonia killed 11 percent of
those who acquired it in a hospital.

"Isolation is ineffective if all workers are not alerted to the room's
status," Sanzo said. "Yet, though housekeepers and transporters are among the
most widely-travelled hospital personnel, they are being overlooked and
under-protected."

The communications gap results from the fact that most infection control
nurses must still prepare blocked room lists manually. Very often, those
lists are outdated even before the nurses leave their offices.

"Hand washing has proven to be very effective when properly enforced," he
continued, "but if we continue to contaminate support service employees and
mobile equipment, then infection spreads with or without hand washing."

To support his observation, Sanzo points to the fact that over 60 percent
of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are now in the general patient
population, up from only two percent in the mid-70s, when infections were
mostly confined to acute care areas.

"It's going to take a great deal of effort on many fronts," says Lisa
Romano, TeleTracking's Vice President/Chief Nursing Officer and Director of
the company's Avanti consulting division.

According to Romano, communicating information about isolation in
real-time, reducing overcrowding and smoothing out patient flow "are powerful
weapons that hospitals cannot ignore in the war against MRSA and
Gram-negative organisms like Acinobacter, which are resistant to virtually
all modern antibiotics."

Gram-negative germs, so called because of their reaction to the Gram
stain test, have a cell structure which makes them more difficult to attack
with antibiotics than Gram-positive organisms like MRSA. The microbes, which
survive for long periods on hospital surfaces, enter the body through wounds,
catheters and ventilators. They primarily infect hospitalized patients whose
immune systems are weak.

Existing patient flow technology can automatically alert hospital workers
in real-time to the presence of infection when they are assigned to clean a
"blocked" room, Sanzo notes, virtually eliminating the likelihood of
inadvertent exposures. It also can create an audit trail that records where a
patient has been, so staff having prior contact with an infected patient can
be notified if necessary. And, it gives infection control nurses a mobile
visual reference tool to help them assess isolation needs as they make
clinical rounds.

About TeleTracking Technologies

TeleTracking Technologies (www.teletracking.com), world leader in
automated patient flow solutions with more than 800 clients and an 80 percent
share of the penetrated market, is the KLAS(R) Category Leader in Bed
Management. TeleTracking solutions relieve hospital overcrowding by removing
wasted time from patient flow, resulting in added capacity. The
Pittsburgh-based firm has over 1700 solutions installed in some of the
best-known hospitals and health systems in the United States, Canada and the
United Kingdom. TeleTracking launched the automated patient flow industry in
1991 with the first automated bed turnover solution and has since introduced
a number of industry-standard firsts, including the first electronic bedboard
and the first handheld solutions.

    Contact:
    Dennis Morabito
    Senior Mgr., Marketing Communications
    +1-412-391-6078
    dmorabito@teletracking.com

    Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click
    appropriate link.
    Lisa Romano -
    https://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=74316

Dennis Morabito, Senior Mgr., Marketing Communications, TeleTracking Technologies, Inc., +1-412-391-6078, dmorabito at teletracking.com