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Limestone Medical Center in Groesbeck, Texas is the first hospital in the central Texas area to use the innovative BioVigil hand hygiene system to help prevent Healthcare Associated Infections by ensuring all employees who come into contact with patients have the cleanest hands possible. Now in use throughout the hospital, the system monitors hand cleanliness in real time and tracks hand hygiene compliance with 99.9% accuracy on a hospital-wide basis – including the emergency department, which sees nearly 6,700 visits a year. Approximately two million patients acquire HAIs in U.S. hospitals every year — and nearly 100,000 people die of them. A significant percentage of these infections are preventable. Effective hand hygiene, which includes hand washing and using alcoholbased hand sanitizer, is the single most powerful method to prevent transmission of infections. Limestone Medical Center employees wear special BioVigil badges that can sense when they have used alcohol-based sanitizer or washed using soap and water. The badges display colors to visually communicate status with patients and healthcare workers: Green is “clean and safe,” yellow is “reminder to wash hands” and red is “stop and wash your hands.” The system is easy to understand and lets Limestone Medical Center patients know their healthcare provider has clean hands. BioVigil technology utilizes a simple room sensor, a plug-in base station and a small badge, similar to a standard identification badge. The system is designed to detect and monitor hand washing events and automatically communicate and securely forward compliance information.