How the Right Words Can Deliver a 6-Figure Payoff

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that hand washing adherence among healthcare personnel is less than 50%, meaning that  the level of hand hygiene among doctors, nurses, and other clinicians is dismal..

Each year in the U.S., two million patients become infected with a hospital acquired infection and the annual costs range from $4.5 billion to $11 billion. But an infection is not simply a monetary issue, it's a safety compliance issue that puts patients at extreme risk.

The problem doesn't stem from hospitals lack of infection control supplies, but rather from  individual medical professional's compliance with tasks as simple as hand washing.

Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis first corelated infection rates from childbed fever with hand washing in 1847. It took the medical community some time to accept the importance of the task. But it's been164 years  and hospitals and health systems are still having problems with hand washing compliance.

Parkland Memorial Hospital's recent failure to "dispose of soiled gloves and gowns and wash hands after treating patients" shows how even reputable hospitals can slip up on standard practices. The Dallas hospital has agreed to bring in an outside consultant to craft a plan of improvement to protect its $417 million in Medicare and Medicaid funds at risk because of immediate jeopardy deficiencies.

"If Parkland Hospital had been a fast-food restaurant, inspectors would have closed it down and strapped the doors shut with yellow biohazard tape," writes HealthLeaders Media's John Commins.

Yikes. Even my five-year-old cousin remembers to scrub her hands with soap and water after getting dirty. What will it take to make physicians and other hospital staff remember wash their hands and change soiled bed sheets? A solution to the non-compliance problem may lay in hospital signage that appeals to human behavior.

Hand hygiene compliance rises significantly when hospital signage encourages healthcare professionals to consider the safety of their patients rather than themselves, according to a study in Psychological Science.

The It's Not All About Me: Motivating Hospital Hand Hygiene by Focusing on Patients, study involved posting one of three signs at 66 hand-washing stations at several hospitals:

1. "Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases"
2. "Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases"
3. "Gel in, wash out."

Of the three messages, the one that put the focus on patient safety was found to be most effective. The study measured soap dispenser volumes over two weeks and found that staff used 33% more soap when the signage emphasized patient safety.

Though the compliance study was only monitored over two weeks, just two weeks of increased adherence can be meaningful, the study authors say. Just how meaningful? The annual impact of successful signage can have a six-digit payoff.

"We estimated the number of infections prevented in the experimental conditions to be between two and nine, at a cost savings in the range of $9,000 to $30,000 [during the two weeks]," the study says. "This is a substantial return on investment considering the minimal costs of printing and posting signs."

If the increased adherence were sustained for a year across the hospital, the potential benefits include preventing over 100 infections and saving over $300,000, according to the study. Signage savings can add up for hospitals looking to lower bottom lines.

Hand washing can seem like a no-brainer. As it turns out, the answer to this simple problem is a simple solution---a message that hits physicians over the head: Do it for the patients!

The payoff amounts to saved lives, saved dollars, and saving-face.