A good water management plan begins with your facilities management team and a solid risk assessment of your water distribution and storage systems, which must include a walk-through of your hospital with your on-site plumbing expert.
CMS recently updated a memo to its survey teams on...
The Joint Commission’s 2019 Executive Briefings were held September 14 in New York City. The discussion on medication management was one of the most far-ranging, with questions on medication compounding, opioids and painkillers, and syringe use asked and answered. The man doing the answering was...
Highlight the ZIP codes where employees live so you can have a handy reference of staff availability in emergencies, keep policies consistent and updated with the most relevant references, and focus suicide prevention efforts on making your physical environment ligature-resistant.
In a new memo to its state survey agencies, CMS said it would use Joint Commission ligature recommendations—drawn from a task force that was convened by the commission and included several CMS suicide prevention experts—as the federal agency goes forward with clarifying and updating Interpretive...
In the chaos of the emergency department (ED), it’s easy to miss something you’re not searching for. Up to one in five people who die by suicide visit an ED in the four weeks prior to their death. And those who die by suicide are more likely to come to the ED with a non-psychiatric complaint...
You can expect renewed interest in your water management program. This summer, CMS sent out a new memo updating its expectations on Legionella infections. The memo, QSO 17-30-Hospitals/CAHs/NHs, was published July 6. It supersedes the former S&C 17-30-Hospitals/CAHs/NHs, issued in...
The benefits of mobility among hospitalized patients are well-known: decreased pressure ulcers, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and functional decline, to name a few.
“Hospital-acquired pressure ulcers, falls in the hospital, falls that cause injury, DVTs, and pulmonary emboli are also caused...
In patient safety, when hospital accreditors take an interest in something, you should as well. That is why you should be paying extra attention to your dialysis procedures. Each year, 468,000 patients receive dialysis as treatment for end-stage renal disease (ESRD), and surveyors have been...
Most employers are required by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and state law to guard against and respond to claims that an employee was sexually harassed by a coworker or manager. However, what employers may not know is they can also be liable for sexual harassment of an employee by non-...
This June, FDA issued an alert reminding healthcare professionals and facility staff of “factors that increase the risk of surgical fires on or near a patient.” The agency also recommended practices to reduce the occurrence of surgical fires, including “the safe use of medical devices and...
