Can Privacy Curtains impact your HCAHPS score?

Following the Covid-19 pandemic family and patients have become critically aware of the importance of disinfection of all high-risk touchpoints in the patient zone. This especially true for recovering patients who are coming out of surgery.

Surgical site infections are very costly to the hospital but even more so to the patient who is frequently impacted for life.

The CDC reports that 4.9M people contract a Healthcare Associated Infection (HAIs), resulting in over 480,000 deaths each year unnecessarily but many agree that these numbers are underreported. HAIs are the 3rd leading cause of death following heart failure and cancer.

Why is it that the privacy curtain, touched by everyone, continues to fly under the radar as a source of contamination? It’s not uncommon to be in a patient room and notice that the curtain label indicates that is has not been exchanged for?14 months.

FACT: Patient’s perceptions of room cleanliness are associated with infection and mortality rates from 87 hospitals.

It’s not surprising that patients and their loved ones “know clean when they see it” and that they value it. If enough patients are saying the hospital is not clean as evidenced by a curtain that hasn’t been changed, hospital leadership should listen to them. Patients are making judgements about the quality of care when things are not as they should be and when best practices for cleaning are not being adhered to.