Audio conference highlight: CEOs and your Joint Commission PFIs

Hi everyone, it’s Scott Wallask. I’d sure like to thank everyone who joined us on Thursday for our free audio conference, “Hospital Safety in 2009: A Sneak Preview of HCPro’s 3rd Annual Hospital Safety Center Symposium.”

In addition to getting an early look at what’s coming for this year’s Hospital Safety Center Symposium May 14-15, listeners also got an interesting tidbit from Brad Keyes, CHSP, life safety consultant for The Greeley Company in Marblehead, MA.

If your CEOs or board members don’t agree to fund a life safety deficiency noted on a Joint Commission plan for improvement (PFI), remind them that a PFI acts as a contract between the hospital and the commission, Keyes told the audience.

In other words, administrators don’t have the option to not fund a PFI unless they want to risk an adverse accreditation decision during a survey. Spell that out to your CEO if there’s ever a dispute, or better yet, get the CEO involved in PFI decision-making so her or she knows up front what cost commitments are involved.

We’ll have more highlights from the audio conference in future blog entries, and if you didn’t have a chance to join us, we’ll also be posting the full program online soon as a download for you to listen to.