Electronic hand hygiene monitoring as a tool for reducing health care-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection.

Electronic monitoring of hand hygiene compliance using the World Health Organization's My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene is a new innovation that has not yet been shown to reduce hospital infections. We analyzed existing data from 23 inpatient units over a 33-month period and found a significant correlation between unit-specific improvements in electronic monitoring compliance and reductions in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection rates (r = -0.37, P < .001). (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc.