Culturewell’s Solution
Healthcare leaders don’t have actionable information about the germs that grow in their facilities.
Culturewell partners with Infection Prevention, Environmental Services, Quality, and Facilities leaders to reduce infection risk, improve facility oversight, and ensure ongoing cleaning compliance by:
- Identifying germ hotspots
- Offering detailed risk assessments
- Providing evidence-based recommendations
Ongoing cleaning compliance and outbreak detection programs are essential to driving risk-based quality improvement in healthcare facilities and beyond.
Culturewell’s Outbreak Insights & Cleanliness platform saves lives and money by empowering data-driven decisions on how to strategically deploy cleaning resources to prevent infections and stop outbreaks.
Disrupt the Chain of Transmission. Reduce HAI Risk.
The Solution
Breakthrough Culturewell Services Deliver Actionable Insights for Evidence-Based Interventions
Culturewell’s technology-enabled service helps detect dangerous germs such as Candida auris, Bacillus cereus, MRSA, C. diff., and other ESKAPES pathogens, identifying critical and costly cleaning process gaps, and providing healthcare’s best tools for rapid outbreak response and ongoing cleaning compliance excellence to stop outbreaks before they start.
Culturewell is a cleaning and infection prevention auditing service that samples surfaces, water, and air for germs and is specifically designed to meet healthcare’s demanding technological requirements:
- With 100x better detection limits (<1 CFU/cm2) than other technologies available, Culturewell is able to recover smaller quantities of germs from the challenging surfaces often found in healthcare, high-touch surfaces, like bed and bathroom handrails, overbed tables, supply carts, and IV poles. Avoid falsely negative sample collection and detect dangerous pathogens.
- If the germ grows, Culturewell identifies it without the need to specify what you are looking for, with a database of thousands of germs, including C.auris, C. difficile, ESKAPES pathogens, MRSA, and molds.
- Fast turnaround to enable action and nip outbreaks in the bud, with viable organism IDs as early as 18 hours from sample receipt in Culturewell’s laboratory.
- For a fast heads-up for really risky findings, opt-in critical result notifications deliver Genus- and species-level identification as soon as the results are available.
- Dynamic, easy-to-interpret risk-based digital germ heatmaps delivered in near real-time via our private online portal includes germ locations, descriptions, and risk ratings.
- Leverage Culturewell’s AI-enabled, evidence-based recommendations customized to the unit type and room addresses the specific germs found for evidence-based actions you can take to reduce HAI risk.
- On-site sample collection by Culturewell’s professional Samplers allow us to reduce pre-analytical risk to your results. We sample the same way every time, avoiding the need to ask nursing, IP, or EVS teams to spend time on sample collection, temperature control, documentation, and shipping. Our process enables consistent, quantifiable risk trends over time.
- See the big picture across each facility by using Culturewell’s risk-based visual management tools (think heatmaps and trend analysis) to communicate risk to organizational stakeholders while empowering them to embrace a prevention mindset and enact change.
Disinfection
Efficacy Testing
Verify efficacy of disinfection products prior to purchase. Direct evidence for budget decisions.
The Culturewell Process
Collaborative planning
- Culturewell recommends a sampling strategy and cadence of investigative, periodic, or comparative sampling events based on your needs and priorities.
- Culturewell services healthcare facilities across the U.S. and can be on-site quickly, depending on the urgency.
- Culturewell will collaborate with you for each sampling event to identify where and what to sample. With our expert understanding of where germs like to hide and a strong sense of how to evaluate different kinds of units effectively, we’ll plan each sampling event to meet your needs and achieve your goals.
On-site sampling
- Culturewell sends trained, calibrated, and credentialed expert samplers to your facility anywhere in the U.S., ensuring consistent third-party sample collection on high-touch surfaces, keeping your teams focused on their primary priorities.
- Culturewell samplers use proprietary sampling methods, tools, and automation to control pre-analytical variables, ensure accurate and consistent sample collection, and evaluate areas for cleanliness.
- Culturewell identifies aesthetic issues, such as damaged ceiling tiles, cracked flooring, and damaged unit equipment with each room sampled and includes them on the report. Aesthetic issues are often correlated with germ risk gaps.
- Culturewell’s proprietary methods make custom germ risk assessments, quantitative results, and time trend analyses possible.
Specialty lab testing
- Culturewell’s specialty high-volume microbiology lab was purpose-designed to meet demanding healthcare requirements with accurate, tailored, and effective processes to deliver results fast.
- All Culturewell testing is performed in-house (no subcontractors) for independent, unbiased results in our Ann Arbor, Michigan laboratory that meets all applicable federal, state, and local regulations.
- Laboratory leadership has deep experience in clinical and environmental microbiology, including previous collaborations on infection prevention and disinfection efficacy with the World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and as a member of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council’s ‘Defining Clean’ Workgroup.
Fast, private, online delivery of results
- Results are provided via the Culturewell online dashboard, providing heatmaps of risks and detailed information about what germs were found, how risky they are in a clinical context, and what to do about them as we generate results in the laboratory.
- Culturewell leveraged its deep knowledge, specialized data, and national footprint to develop its proprietary machine-learning trained AI Germ Risk Algorithm to provide you with clinically relevant high/medium/low-risk ratings for germs recovered in specific clinical contexts.
- Culturewell provides specific expert-curated recommendations for evidence-based ways to address contamination sources on an ongoing basis, allowing your team to get to action instead of waiting weeks for results and investing time searching for answers and preparing data for analysis.
Culturewell enables healthcare teams to execute risk-based, systematic remediation and improvement initiatives
- Muster cross-disciplinary resources and stakeholder support at all levels using Culturewell’s easy-to-interpret risk-based germ heatmaps and reports to help Infection Prevention, Environmental Services, Facilities Services, and Nursing teams align and act in a coordinated effort.
- Level up cleaning effectiveness in ways that disrupt the chain of transmission by using Culturewell’s evidence-based recommendations to drive risk-based systemic quality improvement initiatives such as targeted EVS training programs based on risky result patterns.
- Culturewell offers a turnkey solution to meet the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Directive requiring healthcare facilities to institute a performance management program based on risk for independent contractors (such as EVS contractors).
Case Studies
ICU Bacillus Cereus Outbreak
Culturewell helped root out the source of a Bacillus cereus outbreak that caused multiple infections to highly vulnerable patients, and provided pivotal insights and remediation recommendations that eliminated the cause.
Engaging Culturewell
Culturewell’s services are intended to provide actionable systemic insights into germ reservoirs, cleaning gaps, and disinfection technology efficacy by evaluating representative samples in already cleaned locations in healthcare settings.
Sampling Events
When Culturewell’s trained, calibrated, and credentialed samplers come on-site to collect a representative set of samples according to a plan designed in collaboration with our clients, we call that a Sampling Event:
- Monthly or weekly Sampling Events are the cornerstone of an effective ongoing cleaning compliance program that drives risk-based quality improvement and helps break the HAI chain of transmission. A regular cadence of Sampling Events provides quantitative trend information over time and helps evaluate the effectiveness of quality improvement initiatives. Sampling Events can be rotated through different facility areas to keep the improvement momentum going.
- Sampling Events can also be scheduled to meet targeted goals such as investigating the root cause of an outbreak or evaluating the efficacy in the field of a new disinfection technology with a pre/post disinfection on-site evaluation sampling strategy.
Pricing Model
- Sampling Events are priced based on a per sample basis for the number of samples which allows Culturewell’s services to scale to fit our clients’ scope needs. The per sample charges include on-site sample collection, testing in our specialty Culturewell laboratory, and report-out via our online portal with a one-hour virtual meeting to discuss findings and brainstorm action plans.
- Because each Sampling Event requires an on-site Sampler visit plus Sampling Event-specific quality assurance tasks, there is a minimum number of samples per Sampling Event.
- While it is common for new clients to schedule their first few Sampling Events on-demand (no subscription), there are incentives for committing to an annual weekly or monthly subscription including discounted per sample rates, lower minimum sample requirements, and shorter notice requirements.
- Urgent priority scheduling for outbreak investigation is available for an extra fee.
- Actual travel expenses are passed through for reimbursement at cost.
- Specialty services and unusual sampling strategies may be appropriate in some cases. Contact us for a pricing estimate if you have special requirements.
