Monitoring hospital cleaning procedures reduces infection rates and cuts costs

Published: 8-Sep-2016

ATP bioluminescence is a simple rapid method for measuring levels of contamination and verifying cleaning effectiveness

A high standard of hygiene is an essential primary preventative measure in the fight against infection within hospital environments.

Effective cleaning is a science that requires attention to detail, but it is frequently taken for granted and its importance also under-estimated. However, cleaning is often outsourced to the lowest cost provider and is thus frequently inconsistently delivered, inadequately measured and also undervalued.

Failure to clean properly has a huge cost. The UK's National Health Service (NHS) spends £725m per year on cleaning, of which 90% is the labour cost.

Research also shows that only 40% of cleaning is delivered against policy, resulting in a potential 60% wasted resource costing £435m per year.

Visual assessment of cleaning is commonly used but it is subjective and only detects gross lapses in practice. ATP cleanliness monitoring equipment supplied by Hygiena International can provide a simple, low cost solution to driving down infection rates.

ATP bioluminescence is a simple, rapid method for measuring adenosine triphosphate (ATP) which is present in all living things. The procedure requires a small hand held instrument and an all-in-one sample collection and testing device; these generating a numerical result in 15 seconds.


The use of ATP bioluminescence for cleaning verification is well established, and has the highest recommendation by the Rapid Review Panel of the Dept of Health and Public Health England in support of the fight against healthcare acquired infections (HCAIs).

The test is also recognised by the CDC in USA and is written into a standard for cleaning procedures in Denmark and Sweden.

Hygiena International's SystemSURE Plus is recognised as the world’s best-selling ATP hygiene monitoring system and it has associated software to store reports for up-to 5,000 programmable test locations, together with the creation of charts, graphs and reports etc.

It was introduced at the Southport and Ormskirk hospital more than five years ago, to help in their efforts to drive down infection rates.

'The results of ATP monitoring are incorporated into weekly infection prevention and control performance reports which are circulated trust-wide,' said Andrew Chalmers, Consultant Nurse and Deputy Director of Infection Prevention and Control.

'The benefit is that with ATP we can react immediately to the results on site and put any necessary interventions into immediate effect.'

The ATP test is also used in sterile services and endoscopy to replace the outdated protein test and to ensure the highest standards of cleaning are achieved. It is also used by dentists, ambulance and emergency vehicles, care homes and within the catering industry.

Implementing a simple, rapid, objective measurement system such as ATP has a major cost benefit by improving productivity, resource efficiency, staff motivation and communication, and reducing infection rates with their associated costs,' says Hygiena International.

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