quackademic<p>This is a well designed piece of research. It finds, unsurprisingly, that better cleaning = fewer hospital acquired infections = reduced costs. </p><p>How astonishing that such an argument needs to be made! </p><p>If we had more <a href="https://mastodon.au/tags/respect" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>respect</span></a> for the <a href="https://mastodon.au/tags/work" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>work</span></a> done by <a href="https://mastodon.au/tags/cleaners" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>cleaners</span></a> the connection between how well resourced they are to do their work, & outcomes for patients & costs to the hospital, would be obvious to all of us. Even hospital administrators.</p><p>When cleaning is contracted out & budgeted through line items that are separate from those used for clinical services, perverse incentives are created to ‘economise’ on non-clinical functions to improve a notional bottom line. I would guess something like this is at play here. </p><p>As is so often the case, the funding model is the problem. <a href="https://mastodon.au/tags/health" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>health</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.au/tags/hospitals" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>hospitals</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.au/tags/cleaning" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>cleaning</span></a> </p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/better-cleaning-of-hospital-equipment-could-cut-patient-infections-by-one-third-and-save-money-251917" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">theconversation.com/better-cle</span><span class="invisible">aning-of-hospital-equipment-could-cut-patient-infections-by-one-third-and-save-money-251917</span></a></p>