Misunderstanding of regulations perpetuates poor cleaning Many operators and even regulators continue to use and recommend cleaning restaurant tables and other high-touch surfaces with a reusable rag stored in a bucket of sanitizing solution. This solution is easily degraded and difficult to maintain. It is also a poor cleaner allowing contamination buildups capable of harboring […]
Scheduled Restaurant Inspections
Olmsted County, MN continues to lead the way This email, submitted to Handwashing For Life by Olmsted County’s environmental health manager, Mike Melius, serves as a more meaningful update on Scheduled Inspections than anyone at Handwashing For Life Institute could offer. We have experienced that scheduled assessments (inspections) serve an important purpose in “Establishing an […]
The New Legal Look at Handwashing
“quality controls … to safeguard consumer and employee health.” 2016 is starting out as a potential watershed for hospital, nursing home, and foodservice handwashing. Two high profile Norovirus outbreaks at Chipotle restaurants in 2015 were followed by two legal actions and a 35% drop in Chipotle’s stock price. Controlling Norovirus is highly dependent on good […]
Ultraviolet Cleaning for Large Venue Food Service and Processing
Time saving and improved efficacy are the drivers UV success as a cleaning protocol in hospitals now helps define foodservice and food processing niches for potential applications. Hospital experience has outlined where to use and how often. It is not used everyday and doesn’t eliminate manual cleaning of some areas. The bottomline is that UV […]
The 5 Handwashing Hurdles
Sixteen years of formal and informal research has provided the Handwashing For Life Institute with a long list of reasons and excuses for low handwashing rates. Today caregivers may hear of their compliance rate being reported at 90% but in their heart of hearts know it is far short of the reported number. Now with […]
Advancing Compliance Monitoring
Stepping Down the Risk by Stepping Up the Technology Culture change is the only way Handwashing For Life Healthcare has found to convert time-hardened handwashing behaviors. Years of accepting low compliance now defines today’s reality. Whatcha got is … who you are! Years of training have produced waves of temporary peaks in performance. Training without […]
Cut the Ribbon. Cut the Risk.
Celebrating the Culture of Caring S.Truett Cathy, founder of the very successful Chick-fil-A chain, had “Hire for Culture” as his #1 criteria in recruiting new employees at all levels. Foodservice operators who hire right have employees who care. This group needs leadership and regular feedback on their performance. A chef’s job is not about being […]
Handwash Poster: CDC’s “Do-It-Yourself Vaccine”
Flu Season Tip World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Health Day reminded us of the importance of all things food safety and public health. World’s apart in development, all countries share in the dangers of the unwashed hand and those seldom-cleaned high-touch surfaces. Through the lens of Handwashing For Life, World Health Day is first and […]
The Farmhand’s Field Handwash
A FSMA Produce Rule solution Research has found that farmhand’s hands are a major factor in contaminating ready-to-eat produce. Conventional thinking about feces-contaminated water and manure fertilizer as the major sources was challenged in a study by Emory University. Their research included a successful field-testing of SaniTwice®, referred to as the “two-step ABHS intervention” (Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizer.) Responding […]
The Joint Commission Resets Handwashing Compliance
Continuous Improvement Trumps the Mythical “90%” The shortage of actual data on handwashing compliance in healthcare has evolved into a serious industry-wide overstatement of compliance. Knowing good things happen once a 90% level is achieved, reported handwashing rates quickly climbed to that number. Professional advancement and even bonuses are “earned”, institutionalizing a standard of bad […]
