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.
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]
Risk assessments are the way to go with power strip use
As you might guess, I’m in favor of using the risk assessment process to look at the issue of power strip use in hospitals.
And I’d start with a determination of whether a power strip is the most appropriate strategy, with the recognition that once you start with the power strip as opposed to additional electrical outlets, you’ve increased [more]
Keeping a grip on your outsourced medical equipment management
When it comes to medical device management outsourced to vendors, you might consider monitoring the performance of equipment managed by contract as a function of downtime.
It may be that you are paying for more service than [more]
Most of you are well prepared for disaster response, but there’s always the unpredictable event
I really think — this being my ever so humble opinion based on my observations — that most hospitals are adequately prepared to respond to the emergencies they have identified as being the most likely to occur.
That’s not to say there are not improvement opportunities, because there will always be [more]
Regulatory gray areas around this series of less-than-best practices
I was asked about a clean utility room that is also an electrical storage closet, which contains electrical panels, many wires, and oxygen cylinder storage against the wires.
It sounds like the organization had to make use of the available space for its network cabling, and while this is not an optimal environment of care practice, there’s no real regulatory language that precludes it. That said, there are a couple of things I would cite as “other environmental concerns” to consider: [more]
Behavioral settings are tailor-made for risk assessments
I heard about a surveyor who correctly noted that gooseneck faucets could be considered a hanging risk for behavioral patients.
This is where the risk assessment process blooms in all its beauty. The behavioral health physical environment is chock-a-block [more]
