WATER HYGIENE & SAFETY
are low. She has been with the Trust for seven years, previously working in administrative roles in Women’s and Children’s and Surgery. She is an excellent ‘people person’.”
A summary of the headline figures Vince Tennison explained that having received the various reports that the system generates each month, he creates an L8guard ‘Monthly Highlight Report’ – a summary of the headline figures, which is broken down into three distinct data streams – by Trust, by site, and by Department. The report is shared at the Water Safety Sub-Group and Water Safety Group meetings. He also meets informally with the chair of the Water Safety Group once a month to run through the report and highlight particular areas of interest and good practice.
Giving some sense of scale of the number of returns now handled automatically by L8guard, Vince Tennison explained: “Our policy is to undertake 100 per cent flushing of water outlets in augmented care areas across the three hospitals seven days a week. In January this year, there were 14,818 such outlets at our two hospitals in Grimsby and Scunthorpe, for which we sought flushing returns. These are water outlets monitored for Pseudomonas in departments including neonatal, ITU, our renal and respiratory units, and oncology wards.”
Emma Drewery said: “Many of these are incredibly busy clinical areas, and although flushing compliance can fluctuate, return rates are now typically between 95 and 97 per cent. Legionella-wise, our flushing regime expects outlets to be flushed three times per week, which is above national guidance (which normally advises twice a week). The low-use water outlets we flush to guard against Legionella change daily, depending on occupancy of specific rooms or wards. In January, we issued and expected back 2,387 Legionella flushing returns, carefully monitoring how many got missed. Again, flushing compliance levels, for showers, washbasins, and toilets overall across the three hospitals for Legionella are typically 95-97 per cent.”
As much oversight as needed Vince Tennison said “Overall, L8guard gives us as much oversight of flushing return compliance as anybody could possibly expect across thousands of outlets, and provides extremely useful reports that we can use as to communicate with leadership on about levels of assurance. We have been seeing stable very high levels of flushing compliance for both Legionella and Pseudomonas for a sustained period of time. Any significant fluctuations tend to occur at Christmas, or due to staff being
48 Health Estate Journal March 2020
An L8guard Legionella flushing report showing the compliance level across a number of key clinical areas and wards.
away on holiday. There is an excellent triangulation between us and Estates, which undertakes monthly water sampling to test for both Legionella and Pseudomonas.”
“In all,” he continued, “I receive 12 different reports at the start of each month, reporting on returns levels over the previous one. When I joined the Compliance Department here in 2018, I worked with the deputy director of Estates and Facilities, Simon Tighe, and Information & Utilities officer, Emma Barrett, to understand the reports, and identify who would best benefit from receiving them. Our reporting structure here includes both a Water Safety Sub- Group, and an overarching Water Safety Group. The former’s role is more operational; it focuses on each Estates ‘area’, and provides reports on other control activities such as chlorination, and silver/copper levels, plus any works going on operationally. The Water Safety Sub- Group’s members are generally operational Estates & Facilities managers and officers. Each Estates officer has
established areas of expertise, and the individuals responsible for water safety attend the Water Safety Sub-Group’s monthly meetings.”
Water Safety Group’s role Vince Tennison continued: “The more ‘strategic’ level Water Safety Group (which the Sub-Group reports to) meets bi-monthly, and has full ‘cross- representation’ from across the Trust, bringing together clinical and non-clinical expertise. We simply notify Digital Missives which personnel should receive which reports. The key is that the right information gets to the right person. The software also sends escalation emails to department heads on the areas of poor returns compliance. There is a primary, a secondary, and an escalation contact; the latter receives notification of repeated missed returns. Pretty well all the work is done by email, and managed by Digital Missives. Our major input is collating the data generated by L8Guard and trying to turn it into information that people of seniority can use to make informed
A chart showing the rate of flushing returns over a calendar year (July 2014–June 2015).
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