Controlling Infection Through Hospital Beds

Hospital bed capacity, the number of beds available for patient occupancy at any given time, has been an efficiency problem for some healthcare facilities over the years. Although there are several reasons why bed capacity is low at many hospitals, a main issue is slow bed turnover—a shortage of beds that are not available in a timely manner due to maintenance and cleanliness issues. Healthcare Facilities Today reports that environmental services (EVS) teams can improve bed turnover at hospitals.

Low turnover stems from a variety of hospital management inefficiencies including poor communication between departments, not enough staff training on proper cleaning protocols, insufficient monitoring and data collection, and lack of leadership and accountability.

Hospital management and EVS teams can improve bed turnover in the following ways:

• Policies and procedures – The nursing department should alert EVS teams when a room is ready to be cleaned. EVS likewise will let the nursing department know when rooms are ready.
• Interdepartmental cooperation – EVS teams must be able to communicate with other departments in order to initiate routines and evolve partnerships over shared goals.
• Quality – EVS teams must be trained to clean and disinfect following all infection prevention and hospital policies to prevent health care-acquired infections (HAIs).
• Staffing to demand – EVS teams can use data pinpointing patterns for surges in hospital occupancy, so they can have more available workers to meet higher demand.
• Responsive supervision – The best EVS teams have both effective leadership and accountability.
• Monitoring and validating – Effective EVS teams are constantly monitoring policies, procedures, and processes.

Learn step-by-step tips for cleaning hospital beds thoroughly between patients.