Hand Hygiene

The single most common way of transferring healthcare-associated infections (HAI’s) in health care settings is on the hands of health care providers. Health care providers move from patient to patient and room to room while providing care and working in the patient environment.

Proper hand hygiene will protect patients and healthcare providers and will reduce the spread of infections and the associated treatment costs, reduce hospital lengths of stay and readmission, reduce wait times and prevent deaths.

Ontario hospitals are required to publicly report hand hygiene compliance rates. Hospitals will post on their websites, on an annual basis, by hospital site the compliance rate for:

• Hand hygiene before initial contact with the patient/patient’s environment for all health care  providers
• Hand hygiene after contact with the patient/patient’s environment for all health care providers