by Brianna Crandall — August 15, 2014—DebMed, the healthcare program of the Deb Group, has been awarded a group purchasing agreement in the Hand Hygiene Monitoring Systems category with healthcare improvement company Premier, Inc. a healthcare improvement company uniting an alliance of approximately 3,000 U.S. hospitals and 110,000 other providers to transform healthcare.
Effective October 1, 2014, the new three-year agreement allows healthcare organizations that are Premier members access to the DebMed Group Monitoring System (GMS). The DebMed GMS is said to be the world’s first electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring system based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “Five Moments for Hand Hygiene” and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) hand hygiene guidelines.
“As healthcare worker hand hygiene remains at a staggeringly low 40 percent, there is much work to be done to provide safer and cleaner environments for hospital patients and staff,” said Heather McLarney, vice president of marketing, DebMed. “Our contract with Premier allows us to reach hospitals across the country in search of the best way to track and improve hand hygiene to ultimately achieve better patient care. And as the only electronic monitoring solution available that monitors by the World Health Organization Five Moments and CDC hand hygiene standards, we offer something not previously available through Premier until now.”
The complete suite of DebMed products available includes:
- The DebMed GMS: The system electronically tracks staff hand hygiene activity and provides hospitals with timely and actionable hand hygiene compliance data to help organizations create and sustain quality and safety initiatives.
- Point-of-care dispenser: Specialized point-of-care dispensers provide easy access to hand sanitizer within the immediate patient zone. The dispenser supplements the standard wall-mounted units, providing bedside accessibility that will enable healthcare facilities to more readily comply with the WHO Five Moments and CDC guidelines for hand hygiene.
- Product-agnostic monitoring: The DebMed system is also compatible with any soap or sanitizer dispenser. This enables hospitals and other healthcare facilities that may have a preference for one hand hygiene product over another to implement the most reliable method of electronic hand hygiene monitoring while still using the skin care products of their choice.
