Hand hygiene program saves $12 million. (Bottom Line).

A simple educational campaign to encourage hospital workers to disinfect their hands with alcohol-based products saved $12 million in a 3-year period, Dr. Didier Pittet said at the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, in San Diego.

The University of Geneva Hospitals has used 100-mL bottles of alcohol-based hand rub at patients' bedsides since 1970. In 1996, the hospital introduced smaller 75-mL bottles that fit easily into medical coat pockets.

The promotional campaign, started in 1995, made hand hygiene an institutional priority, produced posters encouraging hand hygiene that were hung on hospital walls, monitored adherence to hygiene policies twice a year, and provided feedback to hospital employees.

Adherence to hand hygiene policies improved from 48% of hygiene opportunities in 1995 to 69% in 1997. Rates of nosocomial infection declined from 17% in 1994 to 10% in 1998, the investigators reported previously (Lancet 356[9238]: 1307-12, 2000).

For the current economic analysis, they compared the costs incurred by nosocomial infections--using a "conservative" estimate of $2,200 per infection--with the costs of the hand hygiene promotion program, Dr. Pittet said at the meeting, which was sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology.

The program's direct costs included poster ...