NHS Lanarkshire has set out a detailed action plan following the Healthcare Environment Inspectorate’s (HEI) report on Hairmyres Hospital.
The HEI today (Thursday 8 July 2010) published a report about its visit to Hairmyres on 25 and 26 May 2010.
Tim Davison, Chief Executive of NHS Lanarkshire, said: “Hairmyres is a safe and clean hospital. It is exceeding the national targets for cleanliness, hand hygiene and rates of Clostridium difficile infection and Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemias.
“We are pleased that the HEI inspectors found that Hairmyres Hospital was generally clean and in a good state of repair. They also identified a number of areas for improvement. The majority of these relate to improvements in documentation and policy version control which will be addressed through our action plan.
“We treat any examples of non compliance with our infection control procedures by staff very seriously and will take an urgent and zero tolerance approach in these cases.
“NHS Lanarkshire works closely with service provider colleagues at Hairmyres Hospital and we will also continue to look at how communications with them can be further improved.
“NHS Lanarkshire has already developed an action plan based on the HEI report. The actions within will further enhance our excellent record in driving down HAIs and achieving high standards of hand hygiene and cleanliness.”
NHS Lanarkshire achieved 94 per cent compliance in the last national hand hygiene audit (March/April 2010).
Hairmyres Hospital achieved a 97.9 per cent performance score in the NHS Scotland National Cleaning Services Specification Quarterly Compliance Report for Quarter 4 – January-March 2010. This exceeded the national average of 96.2 per cent.
NHS Lanarkshire achieved its national HEAT target for a reduction in Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemias (SABs), which include MRSA, in March 2010 and is on course to meet its target for March 2011. Hairmyres Hospital had no incidences of SABs in May 2010.
NHS Lanarkshire is currently exceeding the national HEAT target for reducing Clostridium difficile (C.diff).