Estimation and practical economic effects of introduction of a commercial alcohol pad in Kawasaki Medical Schoool Hospital *
Problems have been experienced with alcohol pads produced within our hospital;i.e., lowering sterilization capacity and bacterial contamination due to dryness with time. Based on the regular price for commercial alcohol pads, we estimated economic effects of adopting them through a trial use and measurement the number of pads used and abandoned. The regular price of commercial alcohol pads is usually higher than that of the ones we have prepared. However, in practice, the price of our hospital-prepared pads is almost the same as that of one of the most expensive commercial pads, because we have usually used three layers of pads prepared at one time. The new alcohol pads were prepared and any remaining pads were disposed of every day so that the waste could be estimated. This was 4.82 million yen a year. The results showed that we could save 4.2～11.5 million yen a year in our hospital after the introduction of commercial pads. We then carried out a comparison of four commercial alcohol pads through a one-week trial in the outpatient sections of a few departments and in a few wards. A questionnaire distributed after they were used revealed that they were both hygienic and convenient to carry in one's pocket, but had less volume than those prepared by us and were inconvenient to open. Finally, we introduced one of them. However, our estimated cost and those of reports in another hospital were higher than our practical one of half million yen a year. We believe that the reason for the difference in the regular price from the actual one was due to the differences in size or type of the reporting hospital from ours. However, we concluded that introduction of a commercial alcohol pad would be both hygienically and economically useful. (Accepted on October 14，2005)
