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Abstract
On a national average, hand hygiene compliance rates remain stalled below 60%. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in the US, two million people suffer each year from hospital-acquired infections (HAI). Of these patients, some experts estimate that as many as 90,000 die annually. Hovering just above 60% compliance, leaders at Spectrum Health, the largest not-for-profit health care system in West Michigan, were determined to move the needle on compliance among their 16,000 employees and 1,500 physicians. In 2009, Spectrum's infection control leaders partnered with researchers at VitalSmarts, a corporate training company, to apply a unique change-management model to improve hand hygiene compliance using the VitalSmarts Influencer model. The Influencer Model organizes influence strategies into six sources that both motivate and enable people to change through personal, social, and structural forces. These are: 1. personal motivation, 2. personal ability, 3. social motivation, 4. social ability, 5. structural motivation, and 6. structural ability.