ITS 76 - Observation to Data Visualization- all from a Redcap Survey. a Scalable and Cost-effective Approach to Hand Hygiene Observations

Background: Hand hygiene (HH) is a critical part of Infection Prevention and one of the most difficult interventions to measure. In 2021, a reputational organization required a significant increase with up to 200 HH observations per unit per month. Without electronic HH monitoring in place, our large academic medical center had to upscale our existing program quickly to comply.

Methods: The HH program at our institution used a ‘secret shopper’ direct observation, with observations collected by part-time employees using a real-time REDCap data entry form, with no limit on number of opportunities observed and collected during a single session. Multiple additional HH observers were hired and trained rapidly to support increased observation volume. An additional REDCap tool was added to more accurately capture observations in procedural and ambulatory care areas. Data is extracted daily using an Application Programming Interface (API) from REDCap, from which we built a hospital dashboard in Microsoft PowerBI.

Results: Our hospital-wide HH dashboard is universally accessible, and displays the percent compliance institution-wide and by unit. The interactive dashboard shows the number of observations by unit and percent compliance by type of healthcare provider and type of HH opportunity. This allowed the Infection Control team to create real time, institutional awareness for HH compliance, allowing for targeted interventions and helped achieve 200 observations per month. The ease of use and ability to purpose-build the REDCap tool enabled expansion of the HH program into ambulatory care areas with additional trained ambulatory observers.

Conclusions: This cost-effective approach allows us to scale up or down our HH program without capital expenditures nor physical modifications to the institution. Our data visualization dashboard is a simple intervention that provides real time data for hospital employees and leadership to emphasize the importance of HH, as well as assists Infection Control in tracking HH compliance and opportunities.