Program will monitor doctors' hand-washing

Be sure to wash up, Maryland doctors and nurses. You're being watched.

State officials are creating teams of staff members at hospitals around the state to secretly monitor their colleagues' hand-washing habits as part of a first-of-its-kind program. The monitors will contribute to a systemwide report on hand-washing, using $100,000 in federal stimulus money.

Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown said individuals who are lax on scrubbing up won't be penalized. Rather, the idea is to gather information about which hospital staffs need to do a better job and raise awareness about the importance of keeping hands clean while dealing with patients

"This certainly is not an effort to do a gotcha," Brown said. "We're better off with providers actually using proper hand hygiene than calling out those that don't, so a big component of this in every hospital will be that continual education and awareness."

Teams will be formed at 45 of the state's 47 hospitals to monitor their colleagues after they leave a patient. The monitors will be given time separate from their regular duties to do the research, but they won't let the doctors and nurses know when they're being watched.

The information being gathered starting in January will be compiled into statistics on hand-washing across the hospital system and allow for comparison between the facilities.

Infections caught at hospitals and other health care facilities are among the leading causes of preventable death in the United States, accounting for an estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths in 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.