H1N1 call brings up hospital access control, sick employees

I listened in on a CMS open forum conference call this afternoon about H1N1 preparedness in healthcare facilities, and the topic of infection control in hospitals came up.

A CDC representative noted that [more]

Alarm transmission options are tight when it comes to fire drill requirements

There was discussion swirling this week on HCPro’s Patient Safety Talk group about whether folks are required to actually pull the fire alarm during a fire drill.

Unfortunately this is not quite as clear-cut as one would want, though perhaps [more]

Nuclear medicine admixing and USP 797 implications

During client work at one organization, I heard that nuclear medicine folks were doing some admixing of nuke med preparations. A question was raised as to whether there would be a need for USP 797 compliance.

Some of you may remember the rage several years back [more]

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]

Hurry up and wait for The Joint Commission at the 39-month mark

There’s been a lot of discussion (almost reaching the level of consternation, I dare say) in various forums about The Joint Commission’s survey schedule for this year, and it does appear that visits from our esteemed Chicago friends are in many instances sliding past the triennial survey anniversaries (and not even a card!).

The reasons for this are likely [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.

Bimonthly safety committee meetings are no longer mandated in the EC standards

You may remember an environment of care requirement in the past that mandated safety committee meetings occur at least bimonthly.

That specific requirement under the old EC.9.20 [more]

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.

You aren’t mandated to develop departmental disaster plans

There is no Joint Commission requirement for you to have department-level emergency management plans, unless you have determined through your drilling and evaluation process that there are sufficient complexities to warrant that additional level of planning.

Based on Joint Commission standards, the only requirement is for each organization [more]

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]