On-Demand: New research highlights the critical role of environmental hygiene in reducing HO-CDIs

nProgram Date/Time: Thursday, February 23, at 1 p.m. ET / 12 p.m. CT

Each year, hospital-onset Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infections (HO-CDIs) impact the lives of half a million patients across the United States and cost more than $5.4 billion in excess health care costs. Despite many efforts across the industry, the past 30 years of C. diff mitigation efforts have proven ineffective in substantially reducing HO-CDI. As hospitals and health systems continue to face economic challenges, reducing HO-CDI is a critical opportunity to drive down costs while improving the lives of patients.

In the new study, “Mitigating hospital-onset Clostridioides difficile: The impact of an optimized environmental hygiene program in eight hospitals,” researchers achieved a sustained 50% decrease in HO-CDIs across eight hospitals.

Unlike previous studies that have attempted to mitigate C. diff spread and infection, this was the first-ever controlled study of a single type of intervention—in this case, optimized environmental hygiene—to decrease endemic transmission of C. diff.

We’ll dive into the results of the study and explore the critical role environmental hygiene has in reducing HO-CDIs.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the scope of the problem and why traditional approaches to limiting the spread of C. diff in the healthcare environment fail
• Discuss new insight on the role asymptomatic carriers plays in the transmission of healthcare-onset C. diff infection
• List the critical elements of effective mitigation of hospital-onset C. diff infection
• Describe key factors for change management and implementation of an environmental hygiene program

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