ABSTRACT
To help reduce healthcare-associated infection (HAI) rates across the state, the Maryland Patient Safety Center's Clean Collaborative (Collaborative) supported 17 acute care hospitals, 3 long-term care facilities, and 4 ambulatory surgical centers in improving environmental surface cleaning, with the goal of reducing rates of Clostridium difficile infection, which the Collaborative team selected as a proxy for HAIs. Eighty-eight percent of participating facilities achieved the program goal of a 10% reduction in relative light units from the baseline month to the final month of the Collaborative. In addition, participating facilities achieved a 14.2% decrease in C. difficile rates compared to only a 5.9% decrease among non-participating facilities (in Maryland).
