The Jewish Home and Care Center’s experience is detailed in a study in BMC Infectious Diseases.
The long-term care facility started using the UV robot as part of the disinfection process for patient rooms after discharge and also used it in shared living areas once a week. Researchers compared 36 months of infection and hospitalization data before deploying the robot to 12 months of posttest data. They also cultured high-touch surfaces before and after robot use.
They found a significant decrease in nursing home-acquired infection rates relative to hospital-acquired infection rates. The long-term care facility also saw a decrease in hospitalizations for infection.
“We were extremely pleased to see how our infection rates went down after we began using Nikki, our pulsed xenon UV robot for room disinfection, especially when hospital-acquired infections were on the rise — meaning that the influx of pathogens from hospital sources didn’t adversely affect our patients,” said Christine Kovach, PhD, RN, director of research at Jewish Home and the study’s lead author.
The study concludes that “the pulsed-xenon ultraviolet disinfection device is superior to manual cleaning alone for decreasing microbes on environmental surfaces, as well as decreasing infection rates and the rates of hospitalization for infection.”
Study authors also wrote a “stronger emphasis on environmental surface disinfection in long-term care facilities may decrease nursing home-acquired infections.”
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