CDC: Hand Hygiene Reduces Absenteeism by 20%; Health Care Reformist Says US Schools Can Save Hundreds of Millions Per Year

We noticed several different blogs this weekend profiling a not-necessarily-new report that indicates proper hand hygiene practices can reduce absenteeism by as much as 20%. The frequently-cited report focused on school venues, and found

"..nearly 22 million school days are lost each year to the com­mon cold alone. That number goes down with proper hand hygiene — from an estimated 3.02 days missed per child to 2.42 days missed..."

 One need only extrapolate the above to calculate the cost issues associated with the findings. First and foremost, its easy to assume that teachers and school staff members are similarly exposed to the common cold within the school setting, and as a result, are compelled to miss work days. Those missed days require the school to bring in substitute teachers, at a cost that can equate to as much as $100 per day, if not more. 

According to the US Census Bureau (2006 study), of close to 7 million employed within the public and private school sectors, there are approximately 2.6 million school teachers servicing 100,000 elementary and secondary schools. One unrelated, and admittedly antiquated study (from 1982) found the average school teacher calls in sick 4 days per year.

Aside from lost productivity due to absenteeism, using the $100/day cost noted above, one can connect the dots on the back of an envelope and argue that school teacher absenteeism due to illness costs at least $1 billion each year (2.6 million teachers, $100 per day "substitute cost", 4 days per year) and that a 10% reduction in teacher absenteeism (as opposed to the potential 20% reduction suggested by the CDC) could produce $100 million in immediate savings, not to mention the additional tens of millions of annual savings i.e. health care costs associated with the common cold.

Since President Obama is purportedly a proponent of using hand sanitizer--we'd merely suggest that while the federal government is putting a bigger hand on controlling health care costs, and clapping hands for health care reform, that a few minutes of time and resources be dedicated to understanding the distinctions, and more importantly, the cost/benefits of alcohol-based hand sanitizers vs. alcohol-free alternatives.

We've made our own observations over the past few years, some objective, some subjective. But the math keeps adding up to the same results. Many alcohol-free hand sanitizers are not only equally effective and safer to the skin when compared to the legacy, flammable, and potentially toxic alcohol-based products, but the non-alcohol products are arguably 2x-3x more cost effective.

Wow.

citation: ROBERT WILLIAM COFFMAN, "TEACHER ABSENTEEISM: A STUDY OF SELECTED FACTORS IN SCHOOL DISTRICTS OF THE SOUTH PENN SCHOOL STUDY COUNCIL, GROUP D (PENNSYLVANIA)" (January 1, 1983). Dissertations available from ProQuest. Paper AAI8318154.