All Entries in the "Joint Commission" Category
You may be able to roll a monthly generator test into the triennial four-hour run
Some hospitals do not have enough power tied into the generators to make 30% of nameplate on a monthly basis as required by The Joint Commission under environment of care standard EC.02.05.07, element of performance (EP) 4.
In the interest of making very sure that [more]
Digging into why LS.02.01.20 tops the most cited standards list
I was talking to one of the writers for our Briefings on Hospital Safety newsletter and the question came up about The Joint Commission’s recently released top cited standards.
The frequently cited standards are pretty much a numbers game and a continuation of [more]
Yet another safety standard hits The Joint Commission’s top 10
In a quick follow-up to our post last week about The Joint Commission’s top-cited standards for the first half of 2009, a more complete top 10 list now shows another life safety standard in the mix.
LS.02.01.30, which requires [more]
After the Fort Hood shootings, Twitter proves useful for one hospital
For many people, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are frequently used to quote movie lines or discuss whether they had coffee or hair of the dog with their Corn Flakes. But from a professional standpoint, The Joint Commission is encouraging the use of social sites for emergency management purposes.
Thursday’s shootings at Fort Hood, TX, let one facility rev up its Twitter presence with useful updates and information. [more]
Even splintered, life safety standards top the citation list so far in 2009
When The Joint Commission announced a while back that the old EC.5.20 was the top cited standard in hospitals in 2008, there some observers (including me) who thought that statistic would be hard to repeat. After all, it was reasoned, the all-encompassing EC.5.20 had splintered into various new life safety standards in 2009, none of which would carry the punch of their predecessor.
Well, we non-believers were wrong. Information just released by Joint Commission Resources yesterday shows that for the first half of 2009, two life safety standards and an environment of care standard – all of them related to fire protection requirements – comprised three of the top five most cited standards in hospitals. [more]
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]
New development: CMS now allows six-year damper testing in hospitals
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a memo to its state survey agencies that now formally allows hospitals to use six-year testing frequencies for fire and smoke dampers.
What’s that mean for hospitals? [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]
