The Silent Foundation of Patient Safety: Why Water Quality Matters in Sterile Processing

Welcome to consensus, a podcast from Census Technologies. What's going on, everyone? It's Daniel Litwin, the voice of b two b, and welcome to another episode of the consensus podcast. It's a pleasure to be here with another industry expert, this time getting granular on another slice of the SPD world. But before we jump into today's topic, I wanna make sure you're all caught up on previous episodes of the show. So make sure that you're subscribing to the consensus podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Just hit that subscribe button, and you'll have a full catalog of all of our previous conversations. You can also head to our website, census dot com. Again, c e n s I s dot com for more episodes of the show and, of course, more information on our solutions, services, and everything Census. Alright, folks. Let's dive in. There's a lot to unpack today, and we have quite the expert here to give us the deep dive. Today, we're talking about a factor that silently impacts the entire patient safety operation and sterile processing department operation. Whether we're talking every instrument, every procedure, every patient, Today, we're talking water quality. Right? This is an important factor of general health care operations, but it doesn't often get the attention it deserves. And so today, we're giving it that attention. Joining us here for today's deep dive is mister Jeffrey Paquette. He is CEO of Verda Water Quality Management Systems. He's a leading voice on water quality in health care. Before we fully introduce mister Jeffrey here, just to give you an overview on today's episode, we're going to be diving into exactly what water quality means in the context of sterile processing. Right? Water quality takes on many different forms depending on, well, the water quality needed. Right? And for the type of specific operations we're even discussing. So today, we're looking at SPD as the gauge for which we're measuring against. Right? We're also gonna be exploring how water quality impacts patient safety more generally and instrument integrity more generally. We're gonna be looking at different types of water and what each type means for sterile processing departments. We're gonna highlight how SPDs can better track and improve their water quality using specific systems like SensiTrack, which we'll get into here in a bit. And of course, we're gonna keep things actionable and practical. So we're going to dig into some of the starting points and best practices for facilities that aren't currently monitoring their water quality or maybe aren't monitoring it to the degree or standard that we recommend or that we're going to dive into here on today's episode. So with all of that in mind, let's go ahead and get to introducing our guest and hearing from our expert. Again, mister Jeffrey Paquette, CEO of Verda Water Quality Management Systems and a leading voice on water quality and health care. Jeffrey, welcome to the show, man. How are doing today? I'm doing great. Thrilled to be here. Yeah. Thank you for joining us. And, again, thank you for being this voice, on a critical topic that we haven't explored yet on the podcast, but that naturally deserves its whole episode because of just how critical it is. But often, you know, water quality isn't given its full due attention. Right? And like we mentioned in the introduction here for the episode, water quality monitoring isn't always at the standard that it should be in some of these SPD operational environments. So we're gonna break all of that down here. Let's dive in again with what I said earlier, Water quality is a bit of a general concept here. So let's make it more specific for today's purposes. Can you explain what water quality actually means in practice within the context of sterile processing, right? What kind of water quality and water quality for what? Right, so I think that what I see when people talk about or trying to tackle water quality is they get very fixated on, okay, what do we have to test to be compliant? And that's their understanding of what water quality is. We have to test some stuff to be compliant. And well, yes, you have to test some stuff to be compliant. When we talk about water quality in context of SPD, what we're really driving to is how do we manage water quality in SPD so that we have the best outcomes for our patients? So if we're just focusing on what do I have to test and where do I have to test it, assumes we already have great water quality, that we have nothing, no other work to do except to figure out what we have to test. And it's almost like saying, look, we're going to address this whole problem of sterile processing by just using bio indicators. And it doesn't matter what the IFU say on the instruments or the equipment, we're just going to bio indicate our way into a quality management system in the SPD. Obviously bio indicators are just a confirmation that your process, that your management of the process is working, right? And that's what the monitoring of water quality is about. But it's not the thing that gives you good water. So in the context of the SPD, managing, we want to manage water to have the best outcome for our patients. Fundamentally, at the highest end of the risk scale, when you're looking at what can happen with bad water quality, you're trying to prevent surgical site infections that might be coming as a vector from sterile processing as a result of improper processing of instruments whose root cause might be or be influenced by bad water quality management. And then further down that risk chain is damage instruments and equipment by again failing to manage water quality in the SBD. So walk us through some of the domino effects that come downstream from water quality. Right? Since it is so pervasive, obviously water plays a role in so many little and major critical steps in sterile processing, flow of operations, and even just in healthcare generally. I'm curious why water quality is such a critical factor in SPD success as well as in patient safety. So if you could contextualize that why around maybe some of the specific touch points, right? Where water quality impacts those specific operations and patient safety outcomes. Right. So fundamentally, water is used all over the hospital, not just STD, And we probably understand that water can be dangerous to our patients, Legionella and other airborne type diseases that can be caused by that fundamentally come from water that is stagnating or some problem with the water. So we and the hospitals alone use tens of thousands of gallons of water every day. And that's actually true of the SPD department. They use tens of thousands of gallons of water. And the use of water processing department is the foundation of the process in most cases. Water touches nearly all the instruments that are being processed at some point. And so right from the get go, as soon as it enters the sterile processing department, water is going to begin, touching the instruments. So that becomes the first opportunity for bad things to happen if water quality isn't managed. So at foundation level, water quality affects the way your enzymes and other chemicals, detergents work and how effective they are. So without the proper water quality that meets, say, IFUs of those products, you may develop a problem. And so what problems are those? Well, the problem may be that you leave material on the biological potentially dangerous material on the instruments, or you might damage the instruments because the water quality is bad. And instruments that become damaged over time, not only do you reduce their life expectancy and cost you money, but it increases the amount of inspection and quality control you have to do around the instruments, right? The more bad instruments you have to watch for, the more bad instruments have to go out to get repaired or addressed, or there's always some bureaucratic process around instruments going in and out. And then you got to reprocess them. And so you can see quickly how damaged instruments from water can increase unproductive activity in the SPD department. I mean, yeah, whether it's just fundamental basic patient safety or like you said, you know, poor water quality impacting surgical tools means slowed down operations or waste or, you know, added processes to then get that, hardware surgery ready again. I mean, all those little things add up. A minute here, five minutes there, you know, that's a lot of money, when we're talking about sterile processing departments and we're talking about general health care. So, you it's critical knowing all of those small areas where water quality can have an impact because it again, kind of reframes this entire discussion as we're not just talking about water quality as this kind of siloed operational aspect in sterile processing departments. It's one of the foundational operational metrics really. Right? Or do you have clean, safe, and, properly curated water for all the different needs of the SPD? So with that in mind, we talked about types of water. So now let's get even more specific here. Can you walk us through the three, which there are three key types of water that SPDs need to know about? Now, I'll ask the leading question here in PrimeU, but we're mainly talking about utility water, critical water, and steam water here. So if you could break those down and get even more granular here for us on how they're used in the SPD, when and why they might be used. And if I'm missing anything, free to fill in the gaps. So when people talk about, you know, an Amy standard concerning water or water quality, most people immediately jump to what we call critical water. So critical water is water that is used for final rinsing. It's relatively pure, and it is used to basically wash away any residual constituents that may be organic in nature, metal in nature, salt in nature, or organic material of some sort. And that's what we use for final rinses when we process instruments in the sink and we do some final rinse in a basin before it goes to a washer or maybe even ultrasonic. That's where you would use critical water. You're using critical water in your washer disinfectors as a final processing step. Some ultrasonics will also use critical water. Then modern autoclaves often are using critical water or probably more accurately enhanced critical water to generate steam so that clean steam is touching or cleaner steam is touching your instruments. So when we think about, when people think about AAMI SD one hundred eight and water quality and the SB department, they're always thinking about critical water. However, that's not the most water you use. The most water you use is what AAMI refers to as utility water. Now, people often conflate utility water and potable water or municipal water or building water. And that may be a correct statement or an accurate statement, but utility water has some very definitive analytes that needs to have certain percentages or below certain percentages of content and not all potable water is capable of meeting those thresholds. So, and that's, I would say that's a good many SPD departments are probably using water today for soaking their instruments and general washing in washer disinfectors and in ultrasonics that don't really meet utility water standards for Amy. So that's the first step usually in processing as you use utility water and then you're using critical water. And then finally, if your instruments are going to go into some sort of autoclave that uses a steam vacuum process, then you are using another type of water, which is steam. And the way that is monitored is by measuring the residual steam condensate in the process for determining if it meets the level of purities it's supposed to. I think it's important to note about steam. If you're using modern autoclaves that have stainless steel boilers, IFUs for those boilers generally require actually more highly purified water than critical water. So it is not uncommon that you will have to further purify the water slightly to use in your sterilizers if you're going to use purified water in your sterilizers. So the steam condensate has to meet those minimum requirements, but the IFUs of the steam boiler most likely will require the conductivity level to be ten times lower than critical water. Now testing for water quality across those various fronts looks different, obviously, considering that, you know, each has a different standard for quality and they're each put to different use. So how often would you recommend that those different types of water types, bit redundant, there types of water types, how often should they be tested? Right? And what should SPDs be looking for in those test results? Simple questions, but not so simple to answer because at a minimum, there are some recommended levels for testing by Amy and generally critical water at points of use and at the generation system should be tested monthly at a minimum as well as steam. But utility water is more quarterly, should be tested. In fact, I got to back there, but I have all of my charts there out here if we need to get into the details. Really it comes down to, I think we're going to talk about this a little bit later, when you perform a risk assessment in your department, you may decide that you have to test more frequently because you may have something that's causing you a problem. And maybe this is a temporary thing where for this period of time until we identify and take action on the root cause of this. We're going to test more frequently to make sure we're not out. But the correct answer is really as much as your risk assessment tells you up to a minimum of those times. And then what are you testing for? Generally, you're testing for six or seven different things. You're testing for basically the content of important things in the water that might cause the instruments problems, the equipment problems, or the patient problems. And those are things like bacteria and endotoxins. Those are two things that you're going to be testing for and at what rates and then what quantity is a little bit different depending on which type of water you're testing. You're going to be testing for pH, total hardness, alkalinity, total organic carbon and conductivity. So those are the things that you're going to primarily test for. Now, when you first qualify your system, there are other things they want you to test for to kind of validate and reveal what might be some issues for you specifically. Those are in table two and there's up to eighteen of those that you need to test for. But those are generally when you're qualifying a system or doing a major modification to a system, want to start there. With so many things already being tracked, in a sterile processing department, water quality is obviously critical, but it does add, you know, a fresh layer of, data to have to intake, make sense of, and then properly act on. This is where good technology, good data processing, good visualization of said data, all of this comes into play to help make this essential metric something that is easy to act on and organize around for SPD operational pros. Right? So I'm curious where you're seeing solid technology play a role in helping SPDs better manage their water quality. Are there any buckets or types of tech that you're seeing come into play as of late that are helping make this entire endeavor more achievable? Anything stand out to you as the resident pro here? I believe that the most effective way to, to manage your water quality isn't by essentially I mean, we have to monitor those things we just discussed. That's to demonstrate that we're that our water quality meets standards. However, when we first began talking, you are not going to test your way into better water quality, right? Those are just answers. They're not a management strategy. So any type of technology that allows you to track and or control water quality, the process of producing water to a certain level of purity is going to provide you with the best solution. So what does that mean? Well, if you look at appendix G in AEMI ST one hundred eight, it talks about those things you ought to monitor on the water generation system for critical water. And those in general aren't necessarily, you know, qualities of the water. It's more about monitoring the process of producing water. So with the idea that if the process is in control, it'll produce the water quality you intended it for. So it's things like pressure drops across filters, it's flow rates of the water going through the piping, those type of things. So anything where you can look at data real time or at least give your be able to have insight into trending of the process will allow you to better identify root cause and more quickly bring the water back into compliance. So, you know, data is king here. And what, you know, we on our side, we have a monitoring system in our water generation equipment that samples every two seconds the various process variables so that we it'll and our system notifies us if we begin to trend out of process control. So we can jump in and start doing some root cause analysis before it begins to impact operations. And I'm sure on the census side, you're collecting data from process variables on equipment and other things, and that allows some visibility into controlling processes that the department wouldn't otherwise have. Now to look inward just a little bit, I want to highlight SensiTrack here and get your thoughts on how it plays a role in the larger suite of solutions for SPD water quality management. What role do you see an instrument tracking system like SensiTrack playing in helping monitor, document, and improve things like water quality outcomes? Now even if SENSITRAK isn't directly monitoring water quality, I'm curious where you see, you know, solid water quality monitoring, being reinforced by SENSITRAK or benefiting SENSITRAK. Right? Talk about the interplay there. So any time you can correlate an issue with what is going on in the various processes, you have a way in determining your problem or in managing your problem. So for instance, if you are noticing in the process of tracking instruments, you're noticing quality defects, you can go back to, okay, well, these instruments ran at this time in this piece of equipment. Now, if I can correlate that to what's going on with the water quality at the same time, I might be able to glean at least determine if it might have anything to do with water, right? So anytime you have data that you can correlate in time, then you get a better picture of what is happening to those instruments. So to the extent that SensiTrack can provide that information and then align it with other data like water quality process data that's happening, then you have a better understanding of what is completely affecting the instruments and could be a root cause of your problem. And certainly any data set that is searchable can certainly be powerful in helping you understand like how many times did we have a load where we saw this? And if that's captured in a data set someplace, can say we had it at three o'clock on Thursday afternoon on August fourth, and we had it again at this time and at this time and this time, and then we can go and look at what else is going on with data that we have at those times. And maybe maybe we can find a trend or and some sort of correlation that's worth exploring. Now I'd love to give Verda an opportunity to shine here as well. Sure. If you want to intersect, you know, we gave sense of track a little shout out, but, you know, where do you see, you know, the kind of data captured by and made more actionable by Verda intersecting with water quality monitoring and properly integrating that data into SPD operations? Right. So we collect a significant amount of data from the water that we're generating. And we're primarily talking about critical water in this case. We have some specific products for generating critical water. And we basically take appendix G and SP108 and we have built a monitoring system for doing the process monitoring around that. So what this, the way our business model works, we become a partner with the hospital that essentially we're keeping an eye on the water and then we're just checking in with the sterile processing folks to let them know what is going on with water and if there's anything actionable that has to happen. So it's a very quick loop on if something begins to stray out of process, then the SPD department can take action on it, or we can take action on it with our equipment. Or if we feel that this is something that is coming in from outside the SPD department, then we can work with their facilities people to say, Hey, we've got this issue. We think it's coming out from outside of the department, what is going on? So for instance, we were having, we saw one department where we were seeing a problem with conductivity and it was seen, and when we drilled down on it, after we discovered it real time, we discovered that they had a high amount of copper in their utility water. The source water being fed to us was fairly high in copper. And so when we talked to the facilities people, because it wasn't coming from inside department, they had a system that doses the facility water with copper to combat Legionella. And they discovered that they were way overdosing the facility with this copper. And so they adjusted the levels and the problem went away. So here's an instance where because there is so much monitoring, going on with water quality and SPD, it becomes a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the because people are looking at this in an hourly daily basis. That's not happening as rigorously and to the level that it is in SPD and the other parts of the hospital. Other things where data that we produce becomes valuable is when all of a sudden, are having problems with loads faulting out in sterilizers. And it turns out that the water pressure in the department dropped for twenty seconds and they're not seeing it in the facility because they're not sampling at that rate, but we are, we can show them a graph where, hey, look for twenty seconds lines up with a SensiTrack data for when this was running and bah, there we go. That's your problem right there. So, you know, we could spend months arguing about it or we can just look at a graph, overlay a couple of graphs and say, bada bing, there it is. Which just goes to show how critical it is for that data that's being captured to be intuitive, easy to use, easy to read, and easy to intersect, like you said, with other data points. Really, the biggest challenge of this big data era for all operations. I mean, not just health care, but definitely in health care is having data that is easy to make sense of, like we said. Right? And actually helps reinforce trends rather than just always feel like it's opening a new door to some aimless operational direction. So that's cool to hear. And I'm excited to see how technologies like Verda, SensiTrack and others continue to work together to set that stage, right? That foundation of accessible data and actionable data for larger SPD operational improvements. So thanks for that anecdote. Was solid there. Let's jump now to facilitating some of these operations. So water quality, like we've mentioned, hits on a lot of different departments, not just sterile processing, and it covers a lot of different disciplines, really. Different areas of professional operations that are patient facing, that aren't patient facing. So I'm curious, as you see health care providers, HQ's building water quality programs and assessment workflows, who are the key players that need to be involved in building those programs? Right? Who are the folks that need to be at the table that are in the loop? Right? And anyone that often gets left out of that equation that you think needs a special shout out. Most hospitals are supposed to have a water quality management team. This has been in place for a while, but it was mainly focused on facility water and probably SPD was completely left out of that. Largely in the past, facilities doesn't really see managing water and SPD as their job. It's not regulatory. It's a special thing. And so often facilities is not as involved as they maybe should be in that part of it. So in this new era of ST108, it's pretty specific that your water quality management team has to consist of obviously your facilities engineer, knowledgeable SPD staff, your infection preventionists organization should have a representative. Also your biomedical engineering department, they should have a representative as well as somebody from the surgical staff, somebody involved with patient care. Basically, the downstream customer of all of this should also have a voice in the process. And probably as important is there really should be somebody on the team that is from senior management that has the ability to actually make decisions when something happens with water and action needs to be taken right away. Because what happens a lot of times is there'll be a problem with water and they realize they should do something, but there's no representative from the decision makers about saying, hey, we really have to do something rather drastic here and modify operations, reschedule some surgeries or whatever. And you really need a management sponsor that's going to be bought into it to say, yeah, this is what we got to do to make sure that patients are safe. So Well, what's great then is that it seems like these cross functional teams, you know, there's already a motivation for them to be the standard for staffing out these teams. And like you said, as the metrics for horizons of water quality expand in health care operations, it's now more important than ever for that cross functional multidisciplinary team to get maximized, to really get taken to its logical conclusion. So we're talking professionals from facilities, infection control, biomedical, like you said. What are some tips and tricks you have for these teams working well together, right, and making best use of this data? How do you recommend that they work to interpret data the same, respond to issues in tandem, right, before they impact safety or compliance or blow up into a larger issue? Walk us through some of those interdisciplinary collaboration tricks. Sure. So one of the, I think one of the most important things that was added to sort of this internal list of people is also ST108 is identified that you should have a water quality specialist on your team, and that person can come from the outside. So I think one of the biggest comments I get from people who want to implement a plan or have been measuring water and water quality for years, but never felt comfortable with the whole thing was we get this information and we don't know what it means, right? We don't know what it means and what we should do about it. What are the potential sources? So having the water quality specialists on the team, I think is important in identifying, okay, so you have high copper, what does this mean to the instruments? What's this mean to the potential impacts on the patients? What are potential sources of this problem and where should we look? Because none of the people really on that team are specialists in water quality. Facilities might know a good deal about it, but they probably really don't understand SPD operations. They don't understand how SPD uses water and what the potential impacts might be or even potential sources might be if the source is within the SPD department. So having a water quality specialist helps facilitate those conversations. And that way, it's kind of driven by a knowledgeable party, which then the various departments can collectively decide how to take action based on what might be the potential sources. So you mentioned in one of your previous answers that facilities typically are tracking water quality in some capacity, right? I mean, at this point, it's pretty standard. But let's say they aren't, or let's say they are, but just not to the degree or with the granularity that is now needed to monitor these different types of water, and generally improve, water quality across the board. For facilities that, again, aren't currently tracking water quality or have less than ideal standards, what would you consider as the first step for getting things updated, upgraded, for capturing the right data and doing something about it, right? Where do you start? Right, right. So sort of getting into a regimen of managing water quality effectively and complying with the standard, it's like entering a twelve step program, right? There you you it it it can be overwhelming from the outside. Where do we start? I don't know what this means. Okay. So I've assembled my team. Now what? All that type of thing. So really, the first step is to assemble your team, identify those people who are gonna participate in the water quality management team. And And the next thing to do is to do a risk assessment. And in order to do a risk assessment, you have to understand a couple of things. And this is where every one of those disciplines becomes very important. So first of all, you have to understand how the SPD is using water now. What's the equipment look like? What are they using it for? Is the water they're using conforming with the IFUs of the equipment? Is it conforming with the IFUs of the instruments? That type of thing. Are we using it properly and at the right time? Right? That type of thing. What other practices are we doing? We've seen problems arise over the fact that people are using a critical water spray nozzle handheld spray gun, and they're supposed to reseat it every time on a hanger. But a lot of times it gets dropped into the basin of water or into a dirty sink. And you have this reoccurring bacteria problem in that fixture and you can't figure out where it's coming from and it turns out has nothing to do with the water as to do with the behavior of the people in the department. And that's changing your work process type of thing. And then the other thing you have to do is really understand what your gap is between what you are supposed to be doing for SD one hundred eight and what you are doing and what you can do. So there are certain, there's definitely some plumbing design practices that need to be evaluated in the department to see if you're complying with best practices. That can be as basic as making sure that the critical water you're using is on a loop. So it's recirculating all the time back to the water generation equipment to be resanitized. It can do with how long the connection between the equipment is and that loop piping. And it can do with those types of work behaviors that I'm talking about. So those are all things that go into it. And then you have to look and say, okay, what can I test right now? Because not every department is going to be set up to monitor water correctly. You're not going to be able to sample everywhere. And you may look at your water generation equipment during that gap analysis and realize it doesn't, there's, you know, actually doesn't have enough capacity. It's missing a critical component for best design practices. Like it doesn't have a UV light or some other, we're not using a final filter, that type of thing. Our water's too hard and it's fouling up our own membranes all the time and they're not getting changed enough. So we're getting water that's too high in conductivity and it's not good, all that type of thing. So once you've identified those gaps, then the next thing you do is you devise an action plan that's going to be, what are the near term low hanging fruit things I can do to improve my outcomes now? I can put in some sampling ports, that's relatively easy to do. Maybe I can add a little piece of the water generation equipment that I need. But long term, I know I've got to replace that water generation equipment. I'm using house steam or house steam isn't meeting the quality standards regardless of how much we're filtering it. When we do a renovation in two years, we're going to get different types of sterilizers so we can get off house steam for a primary steam source for instruments. And then once you have that plan, then you work that plan and you do what you can now. You go after the low hanging fruit and then you execute on the rest of the plan as you go through your budget cycles and your planning cycles within the hospital. So compliance doesn't show up two weeks after you put together your team or a month or maybe even two years, but you're gonna be working towards it. And then in the areas where you're not completely compliant, that's where your risk management comes in. You identify, hey, we're not compliant here. We're kind of flying blind here. So we're gonna test these other areas up and downstream more often to manage risk in this area. Do things like that, that makes sense for you to address risk. And that's how you can tell the Joint Commission and other people who were looking at your stuff and wondering if you're gonna be compliant to say that, we're not complying in this area, we have a plan and this is what we're doing to mitigate risks now. An important strategic layer to consider here too, Jeff, that I'm sure you have some solid advice on is the cultural component too. I mean, you are launching a totally renewed approach to water quality across your healthcare HQ or even across your SPD, creating the needed culture that reinforces those standards at the level of habit. Right? That takes a lot of buy in and a lot of collaboration and intentionality. So I'm curious your thoughts there, right, on best practices for impacting from the cultural side of things and baking water quality into SPD operations. How can facilities better embed water quality monitoring into their day to day workflows, into their culture? And, you know, what role does building kind of internal leaders and champions play in, helping set that standard and realize it day after day? Right. So the most important thing is I think when we talked about representatives on the team, you really have to have somebody who has decision making capability in the hospital at a high level to be bought into it and be an active participant. That's gonna be the most effective way to implement a culture shift, think, in water, in the hospital. And from what I've seen from most sterile processing professional, they're all crazy. They love this stuff. They're willing to commit to do anything to do a great job. So I don't worry that if given the support for management that like a militia, they're not going to go after this. There's other groups such as facilities who doesn't always buy into it because, hey, we got a lot of things to do. We got four people. We have to do the regulatory things. This isn't regulatory. This is an SPD issue. And those are the type of things you kind of have to overcome. But I think you overcome those by making people understand that water quality management in the sterile processing department is not a cost center. It is a return on investment strategy because if you manage water quality well in the sterile processing department, you will reduce the demand on inventory of instruments, meaning that you won't be destroying instruments and having to inventory more instruments. You won't have all that quality management cost of instruments going in and out of the hospital for repair, being reprocessed. You won't be damaging your equipment in the SPD department. So that means lower repair costs and preventative maintenance costs. Overall, you'll get an uptick in productivity, significant uptick in productivity in the sterile processing department. We know how hard it is to hire people in healthcare and find the right people. Sterile processing is not immune to that. So why be out there banging your head against the wall trying to create more sterile processing people when what you have to do is just make them more effective by giving them the right tools, right? And then finally, you're going to be increasing the throughput in the operating rooms, which ultimately is the hammer argument for return on investment. So if you could do a couple extra procedures a day in the operating rooms, turns into a real life money for the hospital. And that's a solid argument for a culture change around water. Hey, when you can tie it to some dollars, those always tend to talk a little louder. So I love All right, man, we're approaching the end of the call. Jeffrey, thank you so much for all your analysis so far, on today's episode of the consensus podcast. We'll leave things with a final call to action. If you had to leave sterile processing departments and their decision makers and their water quality champions with one message about water quality, what would it be? What's your last words here for the audience? My last words is managing water quality well in your department. It will transform the way in which you work every day. Subtly affects everything. And so if you want a better life in SBD, manage water quality well. I love it. I got to put that on a T shirt or we'll get a tattooed or something. Yeah. All right, Jeffrey, thank you so much for your analysis today. This has been a great episode. Folks, we've gotten the deep dive here. If you didn't already have this as a top priority, now you know water quality in the SPD and really across health care operations, right, is critical. And it isn't just a little siloed extra layer of management. It's one of those foundational pieces that has a lot of positive, but also negative domino effects if ignored. So take it seriously, build that multidisciplinary cross functional team, and start to bake this data into your decision making as SPD pros. So, again, folks, we've been chatting today with Jeffrey Paquette. He's a water quality expert, CEO of Verda Water Quality Management Systems. Jeffrey, if folks wanna learn more about the work you're doing in the space or tap into your expertise, how can they get in touch? Well, you can always find us on the web at w w w dot vernawater dot com. And there's you can simply call us. Phone number's there. There's info page. We have plenty of we have a blog with plenty of good information as well as some of the events we're attending. We're we're gonna reach out. We're reaching out to local HSPA chapters to do some speaking events. We're going to be in New Jersey. We're going to be in Denver. We're going to be in Oregon. We're going to be in South Dakota. And we're always kicking around Texas a little bit. We have quite a bit of work in Texas. If you want us to come and speak at your local chapter or you just want to talk water about your facility, don't hesitate to reach out. Love it. For anyone who wants to, you know, throw a couple beers back and talk water quality, they know who to hit up. Yeah. I love it. Alright. Well, if you make your way to Texas, give me a shout because I'd love to learn more myself and share it with the Census audience here in the near future. So, look forward to chatting with you again soon, folks. Again, we've been chatting with Jeffrey Paquette. Jeffrey, I appreciate your time again and looking forward to future conversations. Me too. Thanks for having me. And thank you everyone for joining us on another episode of the consensus podcast. If you like what you heard and saw, make sure you're heading to our website, census dot com for more and to explore all of our resources. Make sure you connect with Jeffrey and the Verida team for deeper insights here. And, again, folks, we'll leave it here. Water quality, it's not just a compliance checklist. It's a patient safety priority. So, hopefully, you've walked away from today's conversation with those priorities in check and some action plans for how to better organize and bake water quality into your SPD operations. If you need more information on SensiTrack to see how tools like SensiTrack can, for example, help with monitoring and documentation. Right? Head to our website again, Censis, c e n s I s, dot com. Alright. We'll catch you on the next episode of the Consensus Podcast. I'm Daniel Littwin, the voice of B2B. See you soon.