Moving Forward with Hospital Cleaning

Abstract

It is encouraging to see the development of new innovations in the area of hospital cleaning.1 However, there remains a fundamental question to answer when evaluating changes in cleaning practice. This question is, “Does a novel cleaning strategy reduce the risk of health care-associated infection and is it a cost-effective use of scarce health care resources?” Lack of evidence on patient outcome remains the single most important deficit when proposing changes to routine cleaning practice. It is also true to say that the role of cleaning itself for controlling health care-associated infection is still hotly debated.