Timely insights on whole room disinfection.
HospitalsSeptember 15, 2015
Halo Disinfection System® Benefits Patients—and Hospital CFOs
Preventing healthcare-associated infections saves lives and money
Hospital and health system CFOs are entrusted with the considerable task of containing costs.
So it should not be surprising that they are looking to infection prevention as a way to reduce expenses while improving patient outcomes. Witness a recent Becker’s Hospital Review article, “25 things for healthcare CFOs to know about HAIs.”
First, the estimated direct medical cost of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) is around $10 billion annually. That does NOT include costs that are shifted to private payers, indirect costs or nonmedical social costs.
Becker’s points out the high cost of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections.MRSA is an antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria that causes life-threatening bloodstream infections, pneumonia and surgical site infections.
On average, the chance being readmitted within a year of a hospital stay for patients with a MRSA-positive culture is 40 percent higher than patients who test negative for MRSA. Readmission is especially costly because the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently added MRSA to its list of HAIs for which the government will no longer provide higher payments for the additional costs associated with treating patients.
Clostridioides difficile is another high-cost—and highly preventable—healthcare associated infection. C. diff infections, or CDIs, account for 10 percent of all HAIs in hospitalized patients. Becker’s estimates the extra cost of a CDI at around $11,000 per patient. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were about half a million C. diff cases in hospital patients. The collective cost is a staggering $5.5 billion.
Effective disinfection kills C. diff and MRSA, eliminating unnecessary costs and human suffering.
The Halo Disinfection System kills C. diff, MRSA and other pathogens on every surface in the room with its no-touch fogging technology. The Environmental Protection Agency has validated HaloMist with a six-log kill rate of 99.9999% against C. diff spores, the gold standard of disinfection.
The average cost is less than $15 per room, which is why wise CFOs are so interested in the Halo Disinfection System. When hospitals consider just the cost of treating C. diff infection cases they avoid (and ignore the risk management costs of giving patients infections during their stays), they return over $23 for every $1 they spend to fog their rooms. The Halo Disinfection System is the clear choice in eradicating infections and reducing costs.