Both hospitals have created teams specifically dedicated to educate staff on best hygiene practices, including hand washing, and develop strategies to reduce unnecessary use of invasive devices and antibiotics.
Dr. P. Phillips Hospital in Orlando, part of the Orlando Health family of hospitals, had no cases of catheter-associated urinary-tract infections in 2013 and 2014 and reduced Clostridium difficile infections by more than 40 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to the report.
South Seminole Hospital in Longwood, Fla., is another Orlando Health facility that had no cases of CAUTIs in 2013 and 2014.
Interim chief quality officer at Orlando Health Thomas Kelley, MD, told the Orlando Sentinel that the practices that yielded such promising results at Dr. P. Phillips and South Seminole have been expanded to all of the system’s hospitals.
Florida Hospital reported a 77 percent decline in central line infections across the system between 2013 and 2014, according to the report.
When compared with national benchmarks, Orlando Health’s Orlando Regional Medical Center and Florida Hospital perform better than or on par in most healthcare-associated infection rates, including central line-associated bloodstream infections, CAUTIs, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections and C. diff. intestinal infections.
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