A new device at a Fort Worth hospital is helping to fight the chance that you ever get an infection during your stay.
Texas Health Southwest has enlisted Xenex in its war on germs and infections inside hospital rooms.
"It's able to get almost every square inch of the room to be decontaminated," Doug Davis, nurse and clinic coordinator at Texas Health Southwest said.
When it comes to hospital decontamination, the Xenex is a game changer. The machine blasts ultraviolet light in the room it's assigned to clean, killing germs instantly, according the company.
"Patients, when they come to us, are at risk for any type of infection, that's one of our goals to potential decrease the chance," Katherine Rhodes, the hospital’s infection prevention coordinator said.
In the past, disinfecting a room by wiping down and cleaning a room by hand could take at least an hour but now it can be done in 15 minutes.
"We manually do our best to wipe down all the flat surfaces of the room but of course with human error there is the possibility to miss a small portion of it," Davis said.
The device costs about $80,000 dollars. The hospital says the machine pays for itself in the long-run.
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"The typical cost of a MRSA patient infection to a hospital is about the same cost of the device," Rachel Sparks, Xenex account services manager said.
Texas Health Southwest is the second hospital in the state to own the machine.
