2,200 Health Care Professionals Participate in National Sharps Prevention Audio-Conference.

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 11, 2004

Convincing healthcare workers to accept and use safe sharps devices is the greatest challenge facing healthcare practitioners seeking to implement safer devices, according to close to 50 percent of participants polled during a national audio-conference today on preventing sharps injuries.

More than 2,200 healthcare professionals, including hospital safety officers, infection control and employee health professionals, clinicians, and device manufacturers, participated in the two-hour audio-conference, "Sharps Injury Prevention: Milestones and Opportunities," which featured nationally known speakers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and member hospitals of Premier, a healthcare alliance of more than 1,500 not-for-profit hospitals.

"The conference underscored the importance our front-line health care workers place in the issue of sharps injuries," said Gina Pugliese RN MS, a leading epidemiologist and vice president of the Safety Institute, Premier, Inc., which hosted the two-hour conference. The level of participation far exceeded our expectations." Pugliese reported on Premier's field evaluations of 34,000 sharps safety devices by more than 800 clinicians, noting that reliability was reported to be one of the top performance features in selecting a device.

Conference presenters included: Denise M. Cardo, M.D. and Linda A. Chiarello, R.N., M.S., both of the CDC; Pam Gill, R.N., B.S.N., Iredell Memorial Hospital; Elise Handelman, R.N., M.S.,Ed.,COHN-S, OSHA Office of Occupational Health Nursing; Tammy Lundstrom, M.D., Detroit Medical Center; Melody Sands, M.S., OSHA Office of Health Enforcement; and Pugliese.

Among the conference highlights:

-- A review of CDC data from more than 7,000 hollow-bore

needlesticks over a seven-year period, suggested that close to

65 percent were potentially preventable, Cardo told

participants. In those instances, such sharps injuries could

have been avoided by the use of available safer devices,

proper sharps disposal, safer work practices, or no needles at

all. Cardo, who is director of CDC's Division of Healthcare

Quality Promotion (DHQP), said one of the DHQP published

healthcare safety challenges is to eliminate occupational

needlesticks among healthcare personnel.

-- Lundstrom told participants that the success of their programs

is related to their hospital leadership's commitment to make

it work; for example, over a two-year period, the Detroit

Medical Center Board of Directors has increased the time

allotted for discussing worker and patient safety issues from

five to more than 30 minutes in order to address these

important issues. Lundstrom said in addition, the hospital

board recently authorized an expedited process for purchases

involving worker and patient safety. Gill also shared how

senior leadership, financial support and her role as a

dedicated prevention professional, made a big impact at

Iredell.

-- Handelman announced Quick Takes, OSHA's free electronic,

bi-weekly newsletter now available at www.osha.gov.

-- According to Sands, the percentage of inspected healthcare

facilities that received a citation for failure to use sharps

injury prevention devices has decreased from 50 percent in

2002 to 20 percent in 2003.

-- Chiarello announced that a web-based workbook and tool kit

will be publicly available soon, with broader implementation

of the materials in collaboration with the Safety Institute.

Additional Premier resources

Handouts and audiotape from the program, sharps safety tools and resources, questions and answers on OSHA compliance, and links to CDC workbook are available from the Premier Safety Institute Web site www.premierinc.com/safety.

About Premier

Premier, Inc., is a strategic alliance in U.S. healthcare, entirely owned by nearly 200 of the nation's leading not-for-profit hospital and healthcare systems. These systems operate or are affiliated with approximately 1,530 hospital facilities and hundreds of other care sites. Premier provides an array of resources supporting health services delivery, including supply chain management support, group purchasing, insurance programs, performance improvement services, and comparative clinical databases and associated benchmarking applications. The Premier Safety Institute was established in May 1999 to fulfill Premier's vision to embrace its responsibility to help improve patient and worker safety -- not solely among hospital and health system members, but throughout the healthcare industry at large. Premier is headquartered in San Diego, CA, with offices in Chicago, IL; Charlotte, NC; and Washington, DC.