What WorksHospitals Place a call for infection control

by Carren Bersch

The last thing on a patient’s mind when he or she journeys to the hospital for care is a possible encounter with other, unforseen health problems, aside from the ones to be treated. Among healthcare professionals, however, the plain fact is that many patients among the thousands admitted daily to hospitals in the U.S will find themselves afflicted with ailments contracted within the hospital walls. So it’s no surprise that among the CDC’s Seven Healthcare Safety Challenges is one reducing targeted antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections by 50 percent by preventing transmission in healthcare settings. 

In their quest to control infection rates, several facilities have turned to Scitec, a telephone-equipment manufacturer based in Champaign-Urbana, IL, a company that offers a solution to the often overlooked problem of patient infection caused by telephones. The company’s single-use disposable telephone product, known as the H2000, is designed to encourage providers to install a fresh bedside phone for each new patient.

Other telecom solutions the company provides include Centrex/PBX/IP-compatible feature phones, headset-equipped speakerphones, emergency sets and line-powered caller ID phones.

In the hospital setting, reducing cross-contamination and eliminating nosocomial infection requires an all-out effort. The transfer efficacy of bacteria, says a study from the University of Arizona, is particularly high for phone receivers, ranging from 39 percent to 66 percent. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that the annual 970,259 deaths from infectious diseases are nearly 10 times greater than accidental deaths combined (95,644). 

Even if disposable telephones do aid in reducing patient infections, what about the performance quality of disposable telephones? What about their ease of use? Their ease of repair? And how do disposables compare to traditional telephones in terms of costs?

Darryl Dunagan, biomedical engineer at the Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center in Mattoon, IL, says the H2000 has been in limited service there for a couple of years. “The telephones are quite easy to install, a simple unplug-and-plug process, with no training whatsoever involved,” he says. 

Dunagan points out that hospital telephones are frequently dropped — and sometimes removed — from patient rooms. The cost of replacement is low in comparison with competing brands, and the H2000 can be simply repaired at the hospital if damaged. An additional cost advantage at Sarah Bush is the savings of cleaning the traditional patient-room phones. 

His predecessor actually ordered the phones for price and quality reasons and had never returned a phone for replacement or repair when Dunagan came on board. At this 192-bed private, not-for-profit, regional medical facility, budgetary restraints demanded a cost-effective and simple solution. 

At Carle Clinic, a not-for-profit, 250-bed facility in central Illinois, director of telecommunications Dan Adcock agrees with Dunagan’s assessment. “Initially, I was paying between $18 and $23 for a slimline phone until I switched to these disposable phones, about $13 per phone, for cost-saving reasons. By using the H2000, we have cut costs by more than half.”

In a network as large as Carle’s — managing 8 million patients throughout locations in 42 counties in both Illinois and Indiana—such savings can be sizeable. Adcock uses approximately 400 of the disposable phones yearly. “The phones are maintained by our telecom department,” he says. “A few are kept in the communications center for off-hour activity. We do not use the H2000s as throwaway phones, however. They give us good service and are used until they malfunction. We have them cleaned by housekeeping.” 

The hospital has used the Scitec phones for three years with few drawbacks. In fact, Adcock found several features on the H2000 that especially appealed to him: a full-length line and a secure wall-mount option. A full line of speakerphones is also available for staff in the OR or nurses’ stations, which help staff to multitask. The speakerphones have been found useful as well for patients who have a difficult time reaching over bedrails to use traditional telephones. The phones also require less cleaning.

At St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago, Elaine Kosiek, director of materials management, has purchased 65 cases of the H2000 phones for the 230-bed hospital. “We have saved several thousands of dollars a year by using disposable phones,” she says.

Kosiek had several reasons for switching to disposable units, citing reducing the risk of transferring viruses or any other infections as one. “Our patients take these phones home with them,” she says. The decision to use disposable phones was driven, too, by the expense of repairing regular phones. 

“We had a big problem with phones pulled out of walls when beds were moved,” she explains. “We used to have a maintenance man just to repair traditional phones. This position was eliminated from the staff, along with the expenses incurred by having to order parts and new phones.” 

January