A new study has highlighted a concerning trend of dirty hospital rooms and a lack of knowledge of how to clean them among hospital staffs.

The study, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, notes that there isn’t much research into how to best disinfect and sanitize the hard surfaces of a hospital room, putting patients at risk potentially, according to a HealthDay News report.

While there are some studies, there aren’t enough to guide proper action, which is surprising for a matter of such importance, stated lead author Dr. Craig Umscheid, an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, according to the report.

The study found that one out of every 25 hospital patients gets an infection from the hospital in which they’re receiving care. There were about 75,000 deaths out of 721,000 health care-related infections in 2011, meaning people who go to hospitals to receive treatment are at a surprisingly high risk of getting a lethal disease there unrelated to why they came in the first place.

Although hand-washing is often pointed to as an important aspect of preventing the spread of disease in hospitals, properly disinfecting hard services is very important as well, and perhaps just as important. Germs can be spread through floors, counters, and bed rails, to name just a few surfaces.

Experts think only about half of all surfaces are properly disinfected during the cleaning of a patient’s room.

The report was based on about 80 studies that were published between 1998 and last year.

The researchers were only able to find five randomized and controlled trials that looked specifically at how to best disinfect surfaces. Only abou ta third of studies focused on infection rates from unclean surfaces.