The DFW Hospital Council is posting blogs submitted by Associate Members. This post was provided by R-Water. For information, please contact Chris Wilson at chrisw@dfwhc.org.

A company in Texas is creating a new product in the fight against deadly hospital acquired infections.

R-Water, based in San Marcos and Dallas, is an eco-friendly alternative to chemical-based disinfectants. This is a greener, safer and cheaper disinfecting and cleaning solution for everyday hospital use.

The insight comes from data and conversations with supply chain, clinical and finance leaders from the 800-plus hospitals who use Open Markets for equipment research, quoting, budgeting and purchasing.

“We have adopted this technology for all facilities of Cuero Health because R-Water addresses the need for disinfection and cleaning, while reducing chemical exposure to our patients and the environment,” says Gary Loftin, Director of Integrated Facilities Management for Hospital Housekeeping Systems and Cuero Health.

The R-Water disinfecting and cleaning solutions are created onsite in a machine that replaces the old J-fill systems that traditionally hang on the wall of housekeeping closets. This equipment is hooked to a water line, filled with pure salt and plugged into a standard wall outlet. A patented internal electrolysis process creates two solutions: one for routine cleaning and one for heavy disinfection. Environmental Services teams fill buckets and bottles right from the equipment.

There have been zero hospital-acquired infections at Cuero Health due to the cleaning process since R-Water was adopted in February 2017.

A women-owned business with a mission to reduce the spread of preventable infectious diseases, R-Water is competing against massive chemical and solutions companies and the big hospital distributors they partner with including Chlorox.

“It doesn’t take harsh chemicals to disinfect a hospital,” said Rayne Guest, R-Water’s founder and CEO. “It may be shocking for many infection control experts and environmental services specialists, but simpler solutions disinfect and clean better. Plus, they are safer for the patient, the staff and the environment. R-Water is simple. Our TK60 disinfecting solution is 99.98 percent water and only .02 percent HOCl, a highly effective germ killer.”

The clinical trials and outcomes from hospital use demonstrate that R-Water is better, safer and cheaper than traditional cleaning chemicals.

From an outcomes standpoint, R-Water is disinfecting surfaces with a shorter contact time than traditional chemicals. TK-60, R-Water’s disinfecting solution, is a one-step healthcare grade product with a one-minute contact time in comparison to three minutes for the Ecolab OxyCide and 10 minutes for the Diversey Virex II 256. The R-Water TK-60 kills C.diff Spores in one minute, compared to OxyCide’s three minutes claim. Diversey does not make a claim for C.Diff Spore disinfection.

This decreases room turn-times and is far easier on staff. For healthcare systems like Cuero Health, R-Water is also saving them money.

“Cost savings comes quickly, as hospitals don’t need to constantly reorder the costly chemicals. This is cheaper than the status quo,” Guest said.

The R-Water cleaning solution, FC+ is clear and odorless, which leads to skepticism on its capability to clean floors, carpets and other surfaces.

Guest gets a chuckle out of people’s response to the performance of R-Water’s FC+ product. Oftentimes, demos of the two solutions last for hours.

“People, of course, love that TK60 kills pathogens so quickly and doesn’t leave any residues behind, but once they start seeing how the solutions works on their carpets and floors, the EVS teams start taking us to all the areas in their facilities that are challenging for them to keep visually clean, because patient satisfaction tends to also be determined by this factor,” said Guest.

“I really get a kick out of the look of disbelief people have on their faces when they see both solutions work so well,” Guest added. “Oftentimes, our biggest hurdle is that our products seem too good to be true, but once they see the solutions perform, it changes the game.”

Franklin Park Senior Community, outside of San Antonio, decided to implement the R-Water system in response to a tough flu season in 2016. Since implementing the system across the 50,000 sq-foot facility the following year, Franklin Park has seen a 65 percent decrease in employee sick days, has seen only four cases of the flu in a building with over 250 residents, and is on pace for a five-year cost savings of $35,025. The cost savings is from the dramatic reduction in the amount of cleaning chemicals purchased.

“When I first started using R-Water, I was skeptical that this product could do what it claims to do,” said Susanne Hutchinson, housekeeping supervisor at Franklin Park. “After all, it doesn’t smell like a chemical-cleaned surface and it looks like plain water. But after several months of using the product, I can tell you that this is the most extraordinary cleaning solution I have ever used in my 20-plus years of housekeeping.”

For information, please go to the R-Water website at http://www.r-water.com/.