1189. Effectiveness of Multimodal Intervention Strategies to Improve Hand Hygiene Compliance at an Academic Medical Center

BACKGROUND: Since the early 19th century, hand hygiene (HH) has been recognized as the most important factor in preventing healthcare-associated infections (HAI). Still, improving HH compliance is a major hurdle for most healthcare facilities. Our study objective was to evaluate effectiveness of bundled intervention tools in increasing hand hygiene (HH) compliance. METHODS: The study was performed at the University of Mississippi Medical Center located in Jackson, MS. A multidisciplinary HH team was established in January 2016. Team members included infection prevention, nurse managers, physician, resident, housekeeping, process engineers, and ancillary staff. Hand hygiene compliance was determined based on room entry and exit observations. Intervention strategies were based on Joint Commission Center’s Targeted Solutions Tool (TST) to identify barriers in HH compliance, standardization of data collection, covert observer training and Just-in-time training of providers. Other strategies implemented included education and feedback, rewards and recognition, and system change measures during the 3-year study period (timeline in Table 1). Hand hygiene compliance was calculated based on number of compliance opportunities/total number of observations. One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed to analyze HH data. We did not assess the concomitant reduction in HAI rates as simultaneous HAI prevention strategies confounded analysis. RESULTS: Based on total 95,491 observations performed (January 2016- December 2018), there was a statistically significant improvement in HH compliance during the study period from 66.5% in 2016 to 73% in 2017 and 79.5% in 2018 (P = 0.04). CONCLUSION: At our institution, we observed a 56% improvement in hand hygiene compliance over 36-months timeframe. Multidisciplinary team involvement and multimodal intervention strategies play crucial role in improvement and sustainment of HH compliance. [Image: see text] [Image: see text] DISCLOSURES: All authors: No reported disclosures.