All Entries Tagged With: "top citations"
Dry your eyes – but don’t dry those wipes!
A quick note of interest from the survey world –
A recent survey resulted in a hospital being cited under the Infection Control standards (IC.02.02.01 on low-level disinfection, to be exact). In two instances, someone had the temerity to forget to close the cover on a container of disinfectant wipes. Can you believe such risky behavior still exists in our 24/7 world of infection prevention? It’s true, my friend, it is true!
The finding went on to say that, as the appropriate disinfection of a surface depends on wet contact with the surface being disinfected, leaving the cover open would partially dry out the next wipe, impairing the ability of the wipe to properly disinfect the surface. Now, I suspect that the person to use that next wipe might somehow intuit that the moisture content in the wipe was not quite where it needed to be and maybe, just maybe, go to the lengths of (wait for it) – pulling out an additional wipe (or two, or three). Now my experience has been that sometimes those wipes are not what I would call particularly well-endowed in the moisture department. And the use instructions for these products usually indicate that you should use as many wipes as it takes to ensure that the surface to be disinfected stays wet long enough for disinfection to occur.
I’ve always been a pretty big fan of the slowly-becoming-less common sense, so I’m not quite sure how we’ll be dealing with this one – thoughts, anyone?
In 2011, set another place at the table
At the recent Joint Commission Executive Briefings Session held in New York, an announcement was made that will infinitely increase the complexity of the Joint Commission survey process for all safety folks. And what, you might ask, is that? Beginning in 2011 (presumably January, but I don’t know that for certain), everybody within the sound of my voice and the sight of my words will be have a Life Safety Code surveyor in their facility for (at least) an additional day during a “triennial” survey. If you had one day last time, now it’ll be two. Two last time, now it’ll be three for you, my friend. And so on.
The fact of the matter is that the data being collected during the survey process (four out of the top five most frequently cited standards are EC/LS related) demonstrates that we (collectively) are not doing a very good job when it comes to compliance with the standards, particularly when it comes to those pesky (and I use that term quite hyperbolically) Life Safety Code deficiencies. And, I have no reason to think that this is going to go away until there is a marked improvement in findings.
Download our popular (and free) special report on Joint Commission citations
If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out why more than 1,100 of your colleagues have downloaded a free special report posted on the Hospital Safety Center.
The six-page white paper, “Joint Commission survey update 2010: Detailed citations in the environment of care, life safety, and emergency management standards,” reports on the results on an exclusive poll we conducted of hospitals surveyed last year.
You’ll see which EC, emergency management, and life safety standards pulled the biggest citations, and also read specific information about a variety of deficiencies that surveyors noted. This is one of the most popular special reports we’ve ever published, so don’t be left out.
