Poster
Client Context
Emory Healthcare, the largest healthcare provider in the state of Georgia, has had an uptick in healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) in the past year. This project, more specifically, takes place inside an Emory Healthcare University Hospital intensive care unit (ICU) located in Druid Hills, GA. The ICU this project is oriented around is focused on liver-related issues such as transplant and rehabilitation.
Project Objective
Our project objective is to improve the cleaning and Central Line care systems in Emory's ICUs to reduce the rates of HAI incidents present in the ICU.
Design Strategy
For (1) the environmental services (EVS) technician cleaning procedure, the opportunity lies in fostering greater awareness of the effectiveness of the cleaning process. To do so, we’ve utilized surface testing methods to identify whether a surface has been cleaned or not.
The opportunity for (2) CLABSI prevention lies in the current central line removal process. The two main problems encountered include the lack of standard removal, meaning each nurse completes the process differently, and long lead times for central line removal (approximately 1–6 hours).
Deliverables
For the environmental services cleaning system, our proposed solution here is to create a tracking system using Excel to audit rooms and create a metric to evaluate EVS effectiveness against HAIs.
For CLABSI prevention, our proposed solution is to create a central line removal decision tree to streamline and standardize this process.
Value and Impact
Implementation of the proposed solutions is projected to save an estimated 1-2 lives and roughly $275,000 in additional patient costs annually. By deploying our central line removal decision tree and Excel-based cleaning audit system, we aim to standardize nurse and EVS workflows and encourage accountability. These process improvements are estimated to cut CLABSI cases by approximately 50% and free up capacity for an additional 88 ICU bed-days per year.
Project Information
Student Team
Joel Chatfield, Benjamin Cooley, Nia Cosby, Jonathan Gomez, India Ogletree, Jiaqi Pu, Eric Snyder
Faculty Advisor
Faculty Evaluator
