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Does a Cheaper Mask Save Money? The Cost of Implementing a Respiratory Personal Protective Equipment Program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Pedro Rivera ,
Joyce Louther ,
James Mohr ,
Angela Campbell ,
Jack DeHovitz  and
Kent A. Sepkowitz
Pedro Rivera
Affiliation:
St Clare's Hospital and Health Center, New York City, New York
Joyce Louther
Affiliation:
St Clare's Hospital and Health Center, New York City, New York
James Mohr
Affiliation:
St Clare's Hospital and Health Center, New York City, New York
Angela Campbell
Affiliation:
St Clare's Hospital and Health Center, New York City, New York
Jack DeHovitz
Affiliation:
St Clare's Hospital and Health Center, New York City, New York SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York
Kent A. Sepkowitz*
Affiliation:
St Clare's Hospital and Health Center, New York City, New York New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, New York
*
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Ave, Box 288, New York City, NY 10021
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Abstract

Objective:

To determine the annual cost of implementing and maintaining a respiratory personal protective equipment (PPE) program at an urban hospital.

Setting:

St Clare's Hospital and Health Center, a 250-bed hospital in Manhattan that treats 60 to 100 cases of tuberculosis annually.

Methods:

Review of Purchasing Department records for all masks acquired by the hospital from 1992 to 1995, and an estimate of administrative time spent developing and implementing the guidelines recommended by various agencies during the study interval.

Results:

Respiratory isolation was provided for 6,360 to 10,883 days annually during the 4-year interval. Yearly costs for the PPE program ranged from $86,560 to $175,690. Of note, the daily cost for a respiratory isolation day decreased dramatically between 1994 and 1995 ($25/day to $13/day), when the high-efficiency particulate air-filter (HEPA) respirator was used by all staff. The decrease occurred because of lower administrative costs and a sharp decrease in the numbers of HEPA units purchased. Objective measures of worker compliance with HEPA respirators demonstrated the decrease was not due to less HEPA use but rather that employees were using each HEPA unit for several weeks, as recommended.

Conclusion:

We found a significant decrease in cost in the second year of our HEPA program due to increasing employee familiarity with the program. Newly approved, cheaper, but less durable, N-95 masks are unlikely to withstand multiple wearings and may be discarded after a few uses. Thus, cheaper masks may result in a more expensive PPE program.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 1997 , pp. 24 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1997

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