Executive Housekeeping Today - March 2009 - (Page 3)

WHY Integrated Cleaning & Measurement TM TM ICM IS GOOD FOR THE CLEANING INDUSTRY Historically, the axiom, “Medicine is more art than science,” expressed the understanding that an experienced individual physician knows his or her patient better than anyone else, and has the intuition to choose what is in the patient’s best clinical interest, even if that choice may not be supported by medical evidence. Physicians were pretty much left alone to treat as they saw fit, based on tradition modified by anecdotal experience. However, with the advent of health insurance and the third-party payer system, accompanied by huge increases in the cost of providing medical care, insurers began to take a closer look at what treatments were effective and how much they cost. This scrutiny helped give birth to the paradigm known as “evidencebased medicine,” now reigning over the medical research enterprise. Evidence-based medicine is essentially the delivery of care based on outcomes research. It asks and attempts to answer the question, “What treatment leads to the best clinical outcome at the lowest cost?” This is where an “outcome” is defined as some benefit that is h By Paul S. Darby, MD, PhD, MPH, FACOEM scientifically measurable and can be justified after subjection to the rigors of impartial peer review and robust statistical analysis. Now, physicians who continue to practice medicine only according to tradition and contrary to methodologically-sound outcomes research simply go out of business because they no longer get paid. In the same way, those members of the cleaning industry (an industry intimately linked with health), who ignore outcomes research will likely soon be out of business because the same paradigm shift is beginning to occur there. Integrated Cleaning and Measurement™ (ICM™) is the evidence-based medicine of the cleaning industry. ICM does not concern itself solely with how a facility looks and smells after being cleaned—these are subjective factors. ICM focuses instead on objective analytical proof of cleaning effectiveness. Nowhere is such proof as crucial as it is in the realm of the hospital-acquired infection (HAI). Such infections plague even the best of hospitals. The causal organisms, such as methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Klebsiella species, and Clostridium difficile are typically resistant to many antibiotics, very expensive to treat, and can easily kill patients with compromised immune systems. Consider how a key component of ICM, ATP bioluminescence, was recently used to identify something as basic as the most effective type of cleaning cloth! Researchers deliberately seeded multiple surfaces of materials used in British hospitals, including tile, laminated countertops, and stainless steel, with pathogenic bacteria responsible for many HAIs. (M. Wren, M. Rollins, A. Jeanes, T. Hall, P. Coën, V. Gant; Journal of Hospital Infection, November 2008, 70, 265-271) Using ATP measurements, they found a consistent, highly significant difference in the contamination of these surfaces after they were cleaned with traditional “J” cloths versus ultramicrofiber (UMF) cloths. The UMF cloths outperformed traditional cloths on every surface, at every level of contamination. In fact, the UMF cloths completely removed, or (continued on next page) March 2009/Executive Housekeeping Today 3

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Executive Housekeeping Today - March 2009

Executive Housekeeping Today - March 2009 Contents Executive Corner Why Integrated Cleaning and Measurement is Good for the Cleaning Industry Hygienic Green Cleaning - The Next Wave Frugal Housekeeper Integrated Cleaning and Measurement: A New Approach to Housekeeping and Sanitation Feature Article What's in YOUR Janitor Closet? The Green Scene 2009 Convention Information Product Highlights New Members Joint IEHA/ISSA Members Advertisers' Index Calendar of Events Inside IEHA What IEHA Has Done For Me

Executive Housekeeping Today - March 2009

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