All Entries Tagged With: "Security"

Don’t sacrifice patient comfort for drill realism

I was discussing emergency management scenarios involving a bomb threat and whether such exercises needed to include the movement of actual patients. [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]

Doctor stabbed: When something goes wrong, security feels the heat

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston finds itself in the unenviable position of trying to deal with a pair of high-profile security incidents within the past nine days. [more]

Ultimate fighting star’s alleged assaults reinforce the danger of healthcare work

The subject of workplace violence in hospitals rose out of the weeds again yesterday with word that a Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) star had been arrested for allegedly assaulting three nurses at a hospital in Nevada on Tuesday.

Fighter Junie Browning, who was fired by UFC following his arrest, originally went to St. Rose Dominican Hospital’s [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]

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]

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]

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]