Leapfrog Group: Almost a quarter of hospitals fail to meet hand hygiene guidelines

A new Leapfrog Group report found that hospitals are improving at hand hygiene, but 23% still don’t meet all 10 of the organization’s best practices.

Urban hospitals continue to perform better than their rural counterparts on meeting the recommended safe practices, including hospitalwide hand hygiene education and training, submitting a recommendations and results report to the hospital’s board of directors, and holding leadership accountable for hand hygiene.

The report also found geographic variation in the adoption of hand hygiene safe practices. In five states, more than 90% of reporting hospitals met all practices, but in six states, only 60% or less of reporting hospitals met all 10 practices.

For more information, read the report abstract.