‘Simple’ software system boosts flushing compliance

The L8guard software system from Digital Missives has highly impressed the Estates Maintenance team at Bedford Hospital, where it has significantly increased flushing compliance. It highlights around 1,600 sinks, showers, and washbasins hospital-wide assessed as ‘low-use’, identifies whether they have been regularly flushed in line with HTM recommendations and hospital guidance, and, where necessary, prompts staff to perform flushing activity. Should the reminders fail, it then alerts senior Infection Control personnel. The system has eliminated the laborious task of inputting data from hundreds of paper returns each week, and compliance levels in respect of flushing to prevent growth and proliferation of Legionella and Pseudomonas aeruginosa have risen from around 50% to 87%, and from 60% to 95%, respectively.

Bedford Hospital NHS Trust, which operates Bedford Hospital, serves approximately 270,000 people across Bedfordshire and surrounding areas. The Trust has over 2,500 staff, and a current turnover of some £180 m. A 425-bedded district general hospital, Bedford Hospital provides a full range of acute services, and has a full Level 2 Accident & Emergency Department, with a recently opened Ambulatory Emergency Care Unit. Its Critical Care Complex provides both high dependency and intensive care. Other clinical services provided at the site include cardiology, dermatology, and plastic surgery. The hospital has nine operating theatres, including a vascular/ interventional suite, complemented by a full anaesthetic service and a consultantled pain service. Oral and maxillofacial surgery and endoscopy patients are treated in their own specialist units, while the Trust’s Ophthalmology service is now managed within the hospital’s facilities by Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Hard FM services