America still has higher hospital acquired infection rates than much of the world; generally, our rates are twice that of Europe, I see from various publications.
Part of the reason is still insufficient hand-washing between patients (a bit of a no brainer). Another significant factor is antiquated janitorial procedures. Europeans were 15 years or so in advance of us in adopting microfiber damp mops, for instance. We still mostly use cotton string mops, and traditional buckets and wringers.
Picture your janitor mopping down a corridor of patient rooms. Even if you can get him to change his mop water after each room (close to impossible, and inefficient as heck), he's still using the same mop head on each room, thereby moving the pathogens from room A to room B, and from both to room C, and so on. Give him, instead, a bucket designed to hold a couple of dozen microfiber mops. When starting each room, he pulls a fresh mop out of the bucket. He does not re-immerse it; when finished with the room, or sooner if the mop runs out of solution, he puts the used mop head in a bag for laundering, and pulls out a fresh mop. Always a fresh mop, always clean mop solution. No cross-contamination.
I could go on. Vacuuming rather than dust-mopping (to pick up more pathogens and general dirt). Using a HEPA filter on the vacuum. Microfiber wipes rather than cotton rags. Filtered burnishers. Hospital grade disinfectant. Nothing costly, or needing more research, or difficult to implement. And hospital acquired infections plummet. Not exactly rocket science.
Matter of fact, it's all easy enough that we use those procedures in all our client accounts, not just the health care ones. Kind of original, trying to keep ordinary office space healthful for its occupants.