One of the complex responsibilities hospital management faces is year-end capital investment planning. In today’s move to value-based care, capital spending must be beneficial to patients, reduce costs, improve quality, and increase efficiency. Finding investments that hit those marks and offer healthcare leaders an appealing ROI is a formidable challenge. Here is a look at each factor and how investment in HAI prevention checks all the boxes for end-of-year planning.
Enhance Patient Care
All businesses rely on satisfied customers, which in the case of hospitals, translates to top-level patient care. And like all businesses, hospitals face competition from each other. Part of ensuring your hospital stands out from your competitors is promoting the services that matter to consumers, notably low infection rates and infection prevention measures. According to the American Journal of Medicine, 94% of consumers view environmental cleanliness as a very important attribute to consider in hospital choice. Further, 93% of those respondents indicate hospital infection rates would influence their decision making. Knowing this, your hospital can leverage its end-of-year capital budget to set itself apart through investment in strong IP strategies, including UVC disinfection.
The Centers for Disease Control reports that about one in 31 patients seeking treatment in American hospitals is hit with a HAI each day. Additionally, nearly 100,000 of those patients suffering from an HAI ends up dying. Frequent, proactive use of UVC technology has been shown to reduce the pool of harmful pathogens present in your hospital environment, reducing the risk of patient exposure to HAIs.
With its proprietary dosage measurement technology, RD UVC can demonstrate the effectiveness of your IP plan to both patients and regulators. This can, in turn, elevate confidence among consumers who consider IP data to be an important factor when choosing which hospital or treatment center to visit for care. Consumers care about a hospital’s track record in fighting HAIs, and deploying the IP power of RD UVC can help alleviate their concerns.
Reduce Costs
Capital investments are often one of the largest line items in a hospital’s annual budget so these expenditures must make fiscal sense in the long run, providing cost savings from other areas of the budget. Treatment of HAIs can incur significant costs. Between the direct, indirect and non-medical social costs, HAIs rack up an estimated $96 billion to $147 billion at hospitals annually. By contrast, the CDC reports that diligent, effective IP efforts can slash an institution’s ICU costs by between $163,000 and $175,000 per patient for just two of the most common HAIs (CLABSI & VAP).
Further, the American Journal of Infection Control reports that even a 20% reduction in C.diff cases as a result of the technology used by the RD UVC
system could save a hospital $1.36 million each year. Because investment in UVC technology avoids having to spend thousands, if not millions, associated with treating often-preventable HAIs, capital investment in RD UVC can greatly strengthen a hospital’s bottom line for years to come.
Improve Quality
Bundling several IP interventions together is a solid strategy for preventing HAIs and a good place to consider end-of-year capital investment expenditures. Leveraging capital for multi-faceted and holistic approaches to IP tools that offers proof of compliance will logically result in improvement of quality.
The American Journal of Infection Control states that bundling UV cleaning technology with traditional manual cleaning is proven to be one of the most effective ways to reduce HAIs. Frequent, proactive use of UVC technology helps reduce the pool of pathogens in your hospital, but only when it delivers the exact dose to kill specific microorganisms that cause infections. RD UVC is the only system that confirms the actual lethal UVC dose is delivered to targeted areas, proving compliance with IP protocol.
Increase Efficiency
A key element to addressing value-based care lies in increased efficiency through all areas of a hospital. Optimizing inpatient throughput is essential to this equation, but there are no shortcuts ensuring patient safety and IP efficacy. Thoughtful capital investment in this area empowers departments to get their jobs done more quickly and, with the right tools, effectively.
The sooner a room or patient area can be returned to service, the better. IP investments should address this by being easy for your ES teams to use, enabling staff to turn over rooms quickly and effectively so that they can put them back into service with minimal downtime.
RD UVC can reduce time spent cleaning patient rooms with UVC and its proprietary “Pause and Reposition” feature that allows for the unit to be repositioned to address the more difficult-to-reach parts of the room in a time effective manner. “Pause and Reposition” can deal with the more pressing areas of a patient room faster, which allows hospital staff and patients to access rooms quicker, thus increasing patient turnaround time and throughput. And because the RD UVC system automatically captures and reports disinfection data, your team has automated proof of compliance data it needs for reporting across all departments.
An Investment That Hits All The Marks
Investing capital budget on effective infection prevention tools is a smart strategic decision for hospitals’ end-of-year expenditures. With a comprehensive, strategic, holistic plan in place, IP tools can decrease HAI rates and represent real long-term savings for any hospital.
RD UVC checks off all four of the key capital investment planning boxes. It is the only UV system that offers hospital staff the ability to deliver and measure the actual UV dose received in a targeted area of interest needed to kill dangerous pathogens. RD UVC is an opportunity to invest in a cost effective tool that protects patients, manages expenses, elevates care and achieves greater efficiency.