All Entries in the "Joint Commission" Category
Former Joint Commission VP among those appearing at our one-day emergency management conference
Joseph Cappiello
Get help analyzing your hospital’s disaster plans while also bolstering your professional development during HCPro’s Emergency Management Coordinator’s Workshop, which takes place October 26 in Atlanta.
Our experts for the program include:
- Joseph Cappiello, chair of Cappiello & Associates in Elmhurst, IL, and former vice president for accreditation field operations at The Joint Commission
- James Kendig, vice president of safety and security for Health First, Inc., based in Rockledge, FL
- Mary Russell, senior hospital project manager at the Florida Department of Health’s Office of Public Health Preparedness
Click here to read our speakers’ full bios and our show’s agenda.
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]
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]
Think about steps to thwart not just infant abductions, but kidnappings of older kids
There is some indication that there is at least one Joint Commission surveyor who is very keen to see what processes are in place to avoid potential abductions of children in the 12+ age range (I tend to think of them as adolescents as a general descriptor).
While environment of care standard EC.02.01.01, EP 9 does specifically mention [more]
The challenges that tie healthcare facilities back to 9/11
Back in 2001, I remember talking to quite a few hospital safety officers and emergency planners about the way the world had changed after 9/11. It wasn’t just the hijacked jets in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania — soon after, the nation was in the midst of anthrax attacks via the mail and there was also concern about potential smallpox bioterrorism.
Yet I re-read some of the articles I wrote at the time and was struck by [more]
Extra fire drill as part of The Joint Commission’s ILSMs
I fielded a question a little while back about using a fire drill as an interim life safety measure (ILSM) under Joint Commission standard LS.01.02.01 EP 11.
The actual verbiage from the pre-2009 standard was that each organization would conduct [more]
