Author Archive for Steve MacArthur
Steve MacArthur is a consultant for The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro. He brings 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is the author of HCPro's Hospital Safety Director's Handbook and is contributing editor for Briefings on Hospital Safety. Contact Steve at smacarthur@greeley.com.
Be wary about using fire drills as emergency management tests
I was recently asked whether fire drills could count towards The Joint Commission’s requirements for emergency management tests under EM.03.01.03.
I suppose if you evaluated a fire drill to the extent called for under [more]
OSHA raises the stakes in the N95 respirator debate
The October 20 edition of our free sister e-newsletter, OSHA Healthcare Connection, has generated a fair amount of what I like to think of as consternation.
At this point, I think most folks are familiar with the CDC coming down squarely on the side of N95 respirators versus surgical masks for use as personal protective equipment during our little H1N1 event.
I’ve heard from some folks [more]
Further thoughts on patient-owned equipment in the hospital
A quick follow-up to a post I made last week about patient-owned equipment coming into the hospital:
One thing you might want to consider relative to these types of devices is whether [more]
Joint Commission offers guidance, but no mandates, for patient-owned items
Many of you deal with patient-owned equipment, such as hair dryers, coming into the hospital.
The Joint Commission published an FAQ on this topic last year, and this is one of those instances in which, in opening the risk assessment door, the FAQ provides just enough semi-specific information to confuse matters. [more]
How leadership interacts with egress corridor storage
In my experience, I’m not sure that I could tie leadership directly to the problem of wheeled items parked in egress corridors.
However, it would certainly not be a stretch for a citation under [more]
Exit signs in mechanical rooms? It depends …
I was asked recently whether exit signs are required in mechanical rooms, as a hospital had received a citation from a Joint Commission surveyor concerning this matter.
There is no specific requirement in the Life Safety Code for mechanical spaces to have exit signs. Moving on to The Joint Commission’s standards, [more]
No hard-and-fast rule to discuss patient safety at EC committee meetings
There is no Joint Commission mandate for patient-safety-related concerns to be managed through the environment of care or safety committee.
Some of the former EC standards (or more properly, EPs) that were removed with the 2009 changeover did imply [more]
Sinks, ice machines, and a little infection control
A little while back, I was asked about an under-the-sink area that was dirty with chipped Formica along the bottom of the sink cabinet. The same organization had dripping ice machines that were rusty.
As it turns out, there is a dual applicability to these problems, as they can be curtailed [more]
Ensure someone in-house at least monitors medical equipment maintenance
From an empirical standpoint, each department with medical equipment being maintained by contract should have an inventory and be able to quantify compliance with whatever preventive maintenance sequence is identified.
The Joint Commission grants a lot of leeway [more]
The Joint Commission doesn’t mandate infant abduction drills, but …
I suspect that the reason The Joint Commission doesn’t (or perhaps even can’t) require infant abduction drills under EC.02.01.01 is that not everyone has to manage the security of those at-risk populations.
My take on this concern is that Joint Commission officials have tried to create standards and performance elements that can be applied [more]
