No BMP coming in 2010, says George Mills

Hi everyone, it’s Scott Wallask. I got a chance to ask George Mills, senior engineer at The Joint Commission, about the future of the building maintenance program (BMP). Mills spoke at a Joint Commission Resources audio conference on Wednesday.

Mills said there is no plan to reintroduce the BMP into the standards in 2010, even though personally he is a fan of using the BMP (Mills helped create the document in 1998 when he worked for ASHE). The question of whether the BMP would reappear has been swirling all year.

He said there are people in the field who still use the BMP as a best practice, but he doesn’t sense a groundswell from hospital safety professionals about making it a mandatory part of the life safety standards.

As you may remember, prior to the introduction of the life safety standards in January, facilities could use  the optional BMP to manage 10 common, maintenance-related Life Safety Code deficiencies (e.g., burned out exit lights), and in doing so faciliites benefitted from scoring advantages.

Because the BMP had always existed in Part 3 of the Statement of Conditons, when Part 3 transformed into today’s life safety standards, the BMP faded away.  Part of the reason was because The Joint Commission pledged not to introduce new requirements into the standards, which would have been necessary to bring the BMP into the life safety chapter, and there was also long-standing concern that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services did not recognize the BMP.