Hand hygiene is a cornerstone of infection control,^1,2 yet compliance remains low, averaging 50% across hospitals nationwide.¹ Audit and feedback can improve compliance,³ but audits traditionally occur using direct observation, capturing few events and leading to inaccurate measurements.⁴ To address this, some institutions have implemented automated monitoring.^1,4 

Woman washing her hands at the kitchen sink. There are vegetables out of focus in the background.

To further validate hand hygiene compliance measurements from automated monitoring and estimate the upper bound of compliance achievable with such systems, we describe changes in compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic as measured by the automated system at our institution, one of the largest such deployments nationally.

Hand hygiene compliance rate during the COVID-19 pandemic

JAMA Internal Medicine

Sonya Makhni, MD, MBA^1,2; Craig A. Umscheid, MD, MS^1,2,3; Jackie Soo, MPH, ScD³; Vera Chu, MS, MLS(ASCP)CM⁴; Allison Bartlett, MD, MS^2,4,5; Emily Landon, MD^1,2,4; Rachel Marrs, DNP, RN, CIC⁴

doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.1429

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2779293