Author Archive for Scott Wallask

New fall seminars about life safety and emergency management

We’re happy to announce two brand new professional development seminars that will focus on the hot topics of Life Safety Code compliance and emergency managment: [more]

Check out our hospital safety ‘tweets’ on Twitter

I finally stepped fully into 2009 and have begun sending updates via the Twitter social networking site. You can see for yourself at http://twitter.com/hospitalsafety.

For those unfamiliar with Twitter, at its core is the ability for users to post short, 140-character updates — known as “tweets” — about what they’re doing. You can keep track of other people’s tweets you’re interested in (i.e., folks you’re “following”) and also see who’s reading your tweets (i.e., who your “followers” are). You need to be registered with Twitter to follow someone’s tweets.

While in some ways Twitter comes across as “too much information,” it is a useful tool to bring news to you, rather than you having to search it out every day.

For example, this week I’ve tweeted about the risk of exposed sprinkler pipes and how hospital engineers can help their CEOs identify inefficiencies. Also, I’m sticking with the topic at hand, hospital safety and environment of care — you won’t see posts from me about the food I ate at lunch or what scenes I most enjoy from Glengarry Glen Ross.

Congrats go out to the winner of our ASHE exhibit booth raffle

Winner Antonio Suarez with HCPro's Amy Jones

Congratulations are in order for Antonio Suarez, director of facilities services at Doctors Hospital at White Rock Lake in Dallas, who won a $200 American Express gift card during our booth raffle at ASHE this week.

Antonio is pictured with Amy Jones, a product marketing director here at HCPro.

Brad Keyes, life safety consultant with the Greeley Company, took the photo. I ran for cover when Brad grabbed his camera.

Thanks to everyone else who stopped by our booth to talk about hospital safety and environment of care concerns  — we enjoyed meeting all of you.

Security best practices noted at the ASHE conference

I just sat in on a great session by hospital security expert Fred Roll of Healthcare Security Consultants. Here are a few tidbits from his presentation: [more]

Immediate threats to life, Joint Commission style

During a keynote at the ASHE conference this afternoon, George Mills, senior engineer at The Joint Commission, outlined four immediate threats to life in the physical environment that tie into the top tier of criticality scoring: [more]

From ASHE: The ‘E’ in RACE is debated

The ASHE conference in Anaheim, CA, is in full swing now. I was at an interesting session this morning where the speaker said it’s time for the E in RACE to get away from “extinguish,” particularly with nurses.

Money spent on training nurses on extinguisher use would be better spent on intalling better sprinkler protection or smoke detection, said Frank Van Overmeiren, president of FP&C Consultants in Indianpolis. More updates later.

Hope to see you at the ASHE conference next week

I’ll be traveling out to Anaheim this weekend to attend the annual ASHE conference August 2-5. If you’re also going, stop by booth 462 in the exhibit hall to say hello.

Joining me there will be Brad Keyes, life safety consultant at the Greeley Company and contributing technical editor for our Healthcare Life Safety Compliance newsletter. I always get a kick out of how many facility and safety professionals remember Keyes from his days as a Joint Commission life safety surveyor.

I hope to post some blog items while at the ASHE show, so watch here for any updates.

Walking free and clear into a locked behavioral unit

I couldn’t help but think of all the security officers out there when I heard a story from a friend over the weekend who went to visit a patient at a locked behavioral unit in a suburban hospital.

As my friend approached the unit, someone coming out of it held open the door for her, so [more]

ASHE: You need to file waivers with CMS for six-year damper tests

ASHE sent a notice to its members Friday indicating that if hospitals want to observe six-year damper testing — as allowed by The Joint Commmission and the 2007 editions of NFPA 80, Fire Doors and Other Opening Protectives, and NFPA 105, Installation of Smoke Door Assemblies — they’ll need to apply for a waiver from CMS.

CMS doesn’t formally recognize the six-year frequencies, due to the fact the 2000 edition of the Life Safety Code, which CMS enforces, references older editions of NFPA 80 and 105, ASHE said.

I’ll try to get confirmation about this from CMS, but I have no reason to doubt what ASHE is saying. The full notice is only available to ASHE members.

Questions raised at one hospital about adequate PPE supplies

Hi everyone, it’s Scott Wallask. My colleagues over at OSHA Healthcare Advisor blogged this week about a hospital that was butting heads with some employees regarding personal protective equipment.

The workers don’t believe the hospital has supplied enough PPE, which raises the question of what would happen to the absentee rate at this facility if a pandemic occurred. The hospital disagrees with the employees’ contention. It’s a though provoking blog post.