Orangeburg, NY—January 9, 2012
PDI, owner of Sani-Hands® Instant Hand Sanitizing wipes, announces the launch of new educational packaging to help aid in hand hygiene for patients and education at the bedside. Four educational “when to use” icons have been added to the Sani-Hands Bedside Pack to help healthcare staff communicate critical opportunities for patients to practice hand hygiene1—after using the bathroom, before eating and drinking, after contact with others and after coughing and sneezing. The easy-to-understand illustrations are also ideal for non-English speaking patients, and are compliant with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization recommendations for hand hygiene.2
Patient and visitor hand hygiene is often overlooked in the hand hygiene programs of many healthcare facilities. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hand hygiene is the single most important intervention to reduce the spread of infections. Moreover, patients own skin flora has been identified as a major source of infection transmission.3 Beyond the importance to provide a patient with a hand sanitizing product, it is equally important to educate them on when and how to sanitize their hands during their stay.
“Our goal is to continually innovate ways to better meet the needs of the healthcare provider while offering cost-effective solutions for the facilities,” said Dan Marsh, Executive Vice President for PDI. “This improvement to the bedside pack packaging serves as the foundation of a broader re-launch of the Sani-Hands line of packaging that empowers patients to play an active role in their own care.”
Recent legislation has placed a larger emphasis on patient satisfaction. Reimbursements to hospitals will now be based on a pay-for-performance model, with thirty percent of that performance based on patient experience via Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems scores (HCAHPS). Optimizing patient hand hygiene and communicating with patients about their care may lead to more positive patient experiences, ultimately leading to higher patient satisfaction scores.
Sani-Hands® Bedside Pack contains 20 wipes, a sufficient number of wipes to use during the course of a typical length of stay. Containing 65.9% ethyl alcohol, the wipes come in a convenient re-sealable pack and are an effective hand sanitizer that kills 99.99% of germs when soap and water is not available. Sani-Hands is clinically proven to be more effective than gels alone.4 The friction of the wipe removes dirt and soil, leaving hands both clean and sanitized. The formulation contains moisturizing aloe and vitamin E to help prevent drying.
PDI helps reduce preventable infections, control healthcare costs, and ultimately help save lives by delivering a broad range of evidence-based, market leading environmental hygiene and patient care solutions. PDI’s expertise in making a difference in the community and healthcare environments extends throughout the United States and worldwide. www.pdipdi.com/healthcare
1 When soap and water are unavailable
2 WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Healthcare: First Global Patient Safety Challenge
Clean Care is Safer Care. World Health Organization. 2009.
3 Burke, John P. M.D.. Infection Control - A Problem for Patient Safety, The New England Journal of Medicine, 2003.
4 Stout et al.: American Journal of Infection Control Volume 38, Issue 9 , Pages 678-682, November 2010.