100. Effect of Disinfection Tracking System on Cleaning Events of Portable Medical Equipment
Authors: Crowley Patrick , Ramirez Hector E , Martel JulieAnn , Stibich Mark , Simmons Sarah , Passey Deborah G , Allton Yonhui , Chatterjee Piyali , Choi Hosoon , Coppin John David , Williams Marjory D , Jinadatha Chetan 
Published: January 2021

Background

Portable Medical Equipment (PME) can play a vital role in transmission of multidrug-resistant organisms. Cleaning PME is challenging and protocols vary by institution. Tracking of PME cleaning events is usually performed manually and demonstration of compliance with protocols is difficult. We studied a Disinfection Tracking Systems (DTS) to understand its potential role in tracking disinfection events of PME and whether its implementation led to improvement in the number of cleaning events. The DTS device was designed to automatically register several types of disinfection events and could be set to display time since last disinfected on the screen.

Methods

For a 25-day period, a single acute care unit received a DTS device with the display screen off but with the ability to detect and log disinfection events in a database from a disinfectant wipe. After the 25-day screen-off period the DTS units screen was turned on to display the number of hours since the last recorded disinfection event (Figure 1) for a 42-day period. DTS devices were placed on 10 computer-on-wheels (COW) and 5 vitals machine (VM). An interrupted time series analysis, using a Bayesian model compared the number of events in the display screen-off to the screen-on period.

Disinfection Tracking System with Screen-off and Screen-on

Results

During the 25-day screen-off period, there were a total of 345 events captured with 61 events on VM and 284 on COWs averaging 0.49 and 1.26 cleaning events for VM and COWs respectively per day. During the 42-day screen-on period, there were 845 total disinfection events with 104 events on VM and 741 events on COWs with 0.50 and 1.76 mean events for VM and COWs respectively per day. The mean events per device per day in the screen-on period for COW’s were 1.32 (1.10 – 1.57) times greater than those in the screen-off Period. The mean events per device per day in the screen-on period for VM devices was 1.37 (0.89 – 2.01) times greater than those in the screen-off period.

Conclusion

Disinfection events for COWs and VMs were found to be above the local policy requirements. Implementation of a DTS device was able to increase the rate of disinfection events for COWs potentially due to the prompt on the screen. Additionally, it captured disinfection events successfully on the database demonstrating its effective to be a tool for demonstration of compliance.

Disclosures

Mark Stibich, PhD MHS, Xenex Disinfection Services, Inc (Board Member, Employee) Sarah Simmons, DrPH, Xenex Disinfection Services (Employee, Shareholder) Chetan Jinadatha, MD, MPH, AHRQ (Research Grant or Support)Department of Veterans Affairs (Other Financial or Material Support, Owner: Department of Veterans Affairs. Licensed to: Xenex Disinfection System, San Antonio, TX)Inventor (Other Financial or Material Support, Methods for organizing the disinfection of one or more items contaminated with biological agents)NiH/NINR (Research Grant or Support)NSF (Research Grant or Support)Xenex Healthcare Services (Research Grant or Support)