by Paige Minemyer | Aug 31, 2018
11:37am
A Virginia VA hospital found it could dramatically reduce
its cases of pneumonia with a surprisingly simple and affordable change:
Getting patients to brush their teeth.
Beginning in late 2016, nurses at the Salem Veterans Affairs
Medical Center Community Living Centers began ensuring patients
brushed their teeth twice a day.
Since then, the number of nonventilator cases
of hospital-acquired pneumonia have decreased by 90%.
“Toothbrushing is saving
lives,” said Shannon Munro, Ph.D., a nurse researcher at the hospital
speaking at the Veterans Health Administration’s Innovation Experience event in
Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Calling the program Project HAPPEN (Hospital-Acquired
Pneumonia Prevention by Engaging Nurses), they have expanded the effort to
eight VA hospitals so far and have to date prevented 117 cases of
pneumonia—saving an estimated 21 lives and reducing costs by $4.69 million.
Developing Project HAPPEN was a collaborative effort between
nurses, infection control experts, physicians and dental professionals, Munro
said.
“It’s very important to use and our nursing staff have taken on
this challenge to help our patients.”
When there is a lot of plaque on a patient’s teeth, it acts like
“sticky sandpaper,” irritating the mouth and producing bacteria, Munro said.
That bacteria can easily then travel down the throat and into the lungs,
causing a pneumonia infection.
Hospital-acquired pneumonia can be a significant risk for
patients—especially elderly ones, as are often seeking care in the VA—and a
recent study found that cutting rates nationwide by even
just half could save nearly 10,000 lives a year.
The HAPPEN program doesn’t require a significant investment in
either time or money—Salem VA spent an additional $5 on patients for supplies
and it added two minutes of face-to-face time to a nurse’s day.
Munro and her team are working with the Department of Veterans
Affairs Innovation Network and its Diffusion of Excellence initiative to spread
Project HAPPEN to more facilities. They’re aiming for 40 additional hospitals
to join to the program in 2019.
“We plan on rippling this across the United States,” Munro
said.
Other hospitals that implemented the program so far have also
seen it pay off, with pneumonia rates decreasing by at least 40%. Most recoup
the cost for oral care items within three months, as it costs an average of
$40,000 to treat one case of pneumonia.
Ryan Vega, M.D., Diffusion of Excellence lead, said that if the
program was scaled to every VA Medical Center, an estimated 1,000 lives could
have been saved over the two-year life of the pilot program.
“These are real numbers and real people,” Vega said. “The
work that these individuals are doing every day is truly changing and saving
lives.”
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