Sticker shock: Compliance your way (not someone else’s)!

As we continue our October re-visitation of some of your more evergreen topics and I was thinking that I had covered this particular topic recently, but it turns out it was rather a long time ago—2012, to be exact (my, my, my, how time flies!).

I guess the general thought/concern relates to whether any particular piece of equipment has to have a due date sticker or some variation thereof. And, interestingly enough, while this still surfaces from time to time, the requirement (or lack thereof) has not really changed in the last seven or so years. Is there a benefit to having a due date so line staff can include a visual when they are using a piece of equipment? Absolutely! If you use color-coded outdate stickers, can it make it easier to discern when something is in arrears? It sure can! Can an outdate sticker call into question the efficacy of your process if there are too many of the “wrong” color floating around? Yup!

If you’re going to use them, then by all means make full use of them. Make sure line staff understand what information is contained on the sticker. Make sure they understand that if a sticker gets removed during the cleaning process, that is an important piece of information to communicate to clinical engineering or whoever is responsible for maintaining the equipment. And, please—for the love of all that is good and practical—try to stay away from policies that speak to the necessity of a sticker being present; another evergreen survey truth is that non-compliance with an internal process is one of the toughest survey findings to clarify. Everything (and anything) you do that is not specifically required by code and regulation should make sense from an operational standpoint. If there’s a program element that has, shall we say, evolved (or mutated) over time and is giving you compliance fits, take it out, dust it off, and make sure that whatever it is brings value to the process. And if it doesn’t? Time to move on!

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.