I sit at my table and wage war on myself—and earn an OSHA citation!
While I have a sneaking suspicion that this Top 10 list doesn’t change a whole lot from year to year (other than position in the hierarchy), I thought it would be of interest to trot out which occupational safety considerations are manifesting themselves across industries. I can certainly see where any of these might crop up in healthcare.
And so, to the list:
10: Personal Protective and Lifesaving Equipment – Eye and Face Protection
9: Machine Guarding
8: Fall Protection – Training Requirements
7: Powered Industrial Trucks
6: Ladders
5: Respiratory Protection
4: Lockout/Tagout
3: Scaffolding
2: Hazard Communication
1: Fall Protection
Again, no big surprises, but I guess it does point out some areas for future consideration, mostly as a function of initial and ongoing safety education. These are the types of things, especially when dealing with contractors, that can result in a very uncomfortable situation if something goes sideways on your campus—even if it’s not your staff. Once the Big O gets through the door, it’s tough to contain their interest in all things safety.
Closing out this week, one of the questions that seems to be coming up with greater frequency during Joint Commission surveys relates to how your organization determines that the individual(s) tasked with doing your rated door inspections are knowledgeable/competent (we know from our intense scrutiny of NFPA 80 that these folks do not need to be certified; it is a handy way to demonstrate that an individual is knowledgeable, but you can certainly evaluate/validate competency in other ways). And pondering that equation made me a little more interested in the following news story than might normally have been the case (there isn’t a time when I wouldn’t have been interested, but this was an especially telling confluence). It seems that an individual has been accused of defrauding some VA hospitals by billing them for work that had not been performed; a little more detail can be found here. I know a lot of folks have struggled over the years with vendors who prefer to “come and go as they please,” which typically results in less control over the process, including timely notifications of discrepancies. I’m curious as to how this ends up when it makes its way through the courts, but I can see a time when those pesky surveyors might start to ask about how one knows that the service for which they have documentation actually occurred. Hopefully this case is all a big misunderstanding and there were no real gaps in oversight…
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Greeley Company in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is also a contributing editor for Healthcare Safety Leader. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.