On Tuesday Feb 24/2016 Lucas Fastabend, Director of BCCCA introduced Dean Waisman, President of Westech, to the BCCCA luncheon.
Dean Waisman is the President of Westech Cleaning Audit Systems and has over twenty years of Canadian Health Care Housekeeping Consulting, Project Leadership and System Design experience.
In the last eleven years under Dean’s guidance, Westech has focused on providing Hospital Cleaning Audit Systems for hospitals across Canada. In 2005 Westech won an RFP to audit the housekeeping of every hospital in British Columbia. Specifically, Westech has set up a Computerized Cleaning Audit System that is used by the Health Facilities to both audit their hospitals in-house as well as provide a third party audit service in which Westech audits every hospital in BC every year. In 2005, the first year that the audits were performed, 26% of the hospitals in BC failed and in the most recent audit completed by Westech in 2015 only 6% of the hospitals in BC fell below the acceptable benchmark score.
Other initiatives led by Mr. Waisman include the development of Hand Hygiene, Food Safety and Patient Survey auditing applications that are currently in use in BC hospitals.
In addition to our work in Health Care Westech has developed an APPA based auditing tool and we audit many educational facilities across BC as well as many triple A office buildings and mall’s across Western Canada.
Waisman is extremely proud of the fact that the work completed by Westech has led to measurably cleaner and safer Health Care facilities across Canada.
Dean began by saying that What do we want to focus on is : ” Saving lives”
Last year 12,000 people died from hospital acquired infections. By comparison 8,000 women died from Breast Cancer last year.
Cleaning is so important in these facilities. How do you keep these institutions cleaner……. by hiring more cleaners.
The key things are :
1.Infection control – frequently touched surfaces must be kept clean or infection is passed on……door handles etc…
2.Public Perception- If the patient has confidence that the facility is clean it actually promotes healing.
3. The tools we use: story of a patient who was lying in bed looking at the window and sees residue. Patient thinks it is not clean. Does not realize that the cleaner just cleaned the window and it is a cleaning residue.
Auditors are put through a 10 day course and cannot audit alone for 6 months.
Some of the tools of the trade that are inexpensive and you can use in non hospital environments as well.
Flashlight: All supervisors should have a flashlight to check accumulation of dirt.
Mirror that extends: A small mirror that extends can be purchased for a modest amount use it instead of white glove test when checking for dust in higher places or underneath.
Baby wipes : useful in in wiping areas of the floor to determine cleanliness or objects that look clean by wiping object can see what the color comes off on baby wipe.
Glo-germ audits : High risk areas. Use glo-germ with UV light it will show if it has been cleaned properly.
ATP monitors: This device cannot tell you which bug is present but can tell you if area has been cleaned properly.
In a hospital back east there was a bad break out of a bug. With this ATP auditing tool they were able to determine that the nurse’s carts was where the cleaning broke down. Therefore the tool was used to bring the nurses’s carts up to the standard.
Thank you to Dean Waisman. Dean gave a very interesting and comprehensive presentation on this subject, that we all learned a great deal from and would be able to take this information and apply to our individual cleaning contracts.