Vitalacy Team - Vitalacy, Inc.

Hands receiving sanitizer from a dispenser juxtaposed with soapy hands being washed.

Are Care Providers Washing Hands Long Enough to Prevent Infection?

Hand Hygiene, Infectious Disease, Laws & Industry Standards / Vitalacy Team

Are Handwashing Habits Preventing Infections? The real-time data providing the answer to whether or not care providers were washing their hands long enough was shocking to one of our customers, with performance well below the 20-second standard recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2019) and reinforced by The Joint Commission (2020). […]

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Nurse checking Vitalacy WebApp dashboard on her phone.

How Monitoring Nurse Fatigue Promotes Wellbeing Conversations

Nurse Burnout, Patient Safety, Safety Culture / Vitalacy Team

Health care is fast – and stressful. It’s no wonder why so many nurses suffer from various kinds of fatigue or trauma. And, unfortunately, due to the speed and pressures of providing health care, nurses rarely have opportunities to talk to their managers and colleagues about their wellbeing. The nurse fatigue and trauma statistics are

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Stethoscope on top of medical charts and graphs.

Do Hospitals Make or Lose Money By Improving Patient Safety?

Hospital Margin, Patient Safety, Technology / Vitalacy Team

Believe it or not, the answer to the question this article’s headline poses has been debated for at least the past 20 years. Many research studies have been commissioned to find the answer and to build a business case for patient safety. Hospitals must justify every dollar they spend according to evidence-based methods, even if

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Nurse rinsing hands under a faucet in a medical setting.

How Nurse Wellbeing Boosts Quality, Safety, and Patient Satisfaction

Hand Hygiene, Hand Hygiene Campaigns, Patient Safety / Vitalacy Team

Improving Patient Care Through Nurse Wellbeing Taking care of those who care for patients is becoming a higher priority for many healthcare organizations. Efforts to improve nurse wellbeing are in response to increased evidence of fatigue and burnout among these care providers, conditions that lead to staff turnover, medical errors and even incidents of suicide.

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Three Nurses Washing Hands at Hospital Sink

Why Effective Hand Hygiene Needs Both Soap, Water, and Sanitizer

Hand Hygiene, Infectious Disease, Laws & Industry Standards / Vitalacy Team

A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study about drug-resistant germs (CDC, 2019) continuing to pose a threat to patient safety renewed the Vitalacy team’s attention to a 2018 study specifically related to hand hygiene. “Increasing tolerance of hospital Enterococcus faecium to handwash alcohols” (Pidot et al., 2018) presents data showing that infections caused

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"Magnet Recognized" emblem by the American Nurses Credentialing Center with a blurred background of nursing credentials.

Gathering Evidence for Magnet Recognition in Your Nursing Program

Hand Hygiene, Patient Safety, Technology / Vitalacy Team

Building Magnet Recognition in Nursing Programs The Magnet Model is the next generation Magnet Recognition Program from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). While providing a framework for nursing practice and research, the model serves as a roadmap for healthcare organizations seeking to achieve Magnet recognition – a measure of the strength and quality of

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Healthcare worker tending to a patient at the bedside, emphasizing patient care.

Survey: Healthcare Workers Urge Leaders to Invest in Patient Safety

Nurse Rounding, Patient Safety, Technology / Vitalacy Team

I noticed a commentary published in Modern Healthcare (2019) by Ann Marie Benedicto, the vice president of the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare. She writes that the center found in a recent survey that nearly eight of 10 healthcare professionals cited a lack of leadership (77 percent) and absence of organizational investment (79 percent)

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Vitalacy Blog - What Do Health Care and Sports Have in Common? Workflow Improvement Wins

Health Care Meets Sports: The Power of Workflow Improvement

Patient Safety, Safety Culture, Workflow / Vitalacy Team

Health care and sports have more in common than you might think, especially in regard to performance and workflow improvement. Improving performance in both depends on analyzing the movements and locations of your team members and making adjustments to achieve better outcomes, whether those outcomes are victories in games or reduced adverse events in health

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Healthcare professional using a laptop in a medical setting, reviewing patient data.

Face Time vs. Screen Time: Has Tech Gone Too Far for Clinicians?

Best Practices, Patient Safety, Technology / Vitalacy Team

My wife was hospitalized recently and, while spending time with her, I couldn’t help but notice how much time the nurses and doctors spent looking at their computer screens. I know hospital leaders are looking for ways to reduce the time clinicians spend on technology-related tasks, but seeing nurses absorbed in computer work when I

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Digital workflow tracking map showcasing the layout of a medical facility and tracking a specific nurse's movement.

4 a.m.—Do You Know Where Your Nurses Are? Workflow Tech Can Help

Nurse Burnout, Patient Safety, Technology / Vitalacy Team

Understanding the real-time workflow patterns of your nurses is crucial toward achieving high reliability in health care. Through their movements during the course of each shift, nurses provide insights that can be used to improve patient safety and quality. New workflow monitoring technology can track their movements and engage their support in patient safety, quality

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Author name: Vitalacy Team