Objective To understand the effect of installing alcohol-based handrub (ABH) devices on reducing the contamination of elevator buttons in hospital. Methods The public elevator buttons in outpatient department, surgical building and internal medicine building of a tertiary first-class hospital were investigated. One week, one month, one quarter, half a year and one year after installing ABH devices and putting up the hand hygiene bulletin were taken as test period, the integrity and utilization rate of ABH devices were investigated by random sampling, microbial contamination on elevator buttons before and after installation was compared. Results A total of 100 installation points (15 at outpatient department, 75 at surgical building and 10 at internal medicine building) of ABH devices were selected for investigation during the test period, with the extension of time, the integrity rate and availability rate of ABH devices gradually decreased. During the test period, 1 613 person-times of elevator button operators were randomly observed, within one month after the installation of ABH devices, disinfection rate of button operators before and after pressing the buttons both gradually increased, and non-disinfection rate gradually decreased; after one month, with the extension of time, disinfection rate before and after pressing the buttons both gradually decreased, and the non-disinfection rate gradually increased to 85.89%. There was significant difference in constituent of utilization rate of hand disinfectant among different periods (P<0.05). Among the 600 button specimens before installation and during the test period, only 7 specimens did not isolate microbes, microbial contamination rate was 98.83%. One week after the installation of ABH devices, microbial contamination rate and the average, median, maximum and over standard rate of total bacterial count were the lowest, and then gradually increased; the qualified rate of total bacterial counts were all low, the highest was 32.00%. A total of 1 411 strains of microbes were detected from 593 elevator button specimens, 1 178(83.49%) of which were Gram-positive bacteria, 222 (15.73%) were Gram-negative bacteria, and 11 (0.78%) were fungi, mainly mold. The main microbes on the surface of elevator buttons were Acinetobacter baumannii (30 strains), Staphylococcus aureus (18 strains), Ente-robacter cloacae (14 strains), and Klebsiella pneumoniae (9 strains). There was no significant difference in consti-tuent of microbes of elevator buttons in different periods (P>0.05). Conclusion The effect of installed ABH devices in this hospital is good during early period, but the management is not implemented in place in the later period, prevention effect is poor, it is necessary to combine the hardware, management and publicity to improve the humanized service level of hospital elevators.