Missed deficiencies within the physical environment, fire safety, infection control and patients’ rights continues to dominate CMS’ annual report card on the annual performance of accrediting organizations (AOs)

A team-based approach to responding to agitated patients in the Emergency Department (ED) setting can result in a significant decrease in the utilization of physical restraints, a recent journal article says.

Healthcare worker burnout has reached crisis proportions and urgent action is required to turn the tide, a national burnout expert says.

Source: Inside Accreditation & Quality

If your hospital or its satellite buildings are co-located with other healthcare facilities, you now face slightly fewer requirements than first proposed for ensuring compliance with acute care Medicare Conditions of Participation (CoP) when sharing services with entities not bound to the hospital safety requirement.

For instance, there is no more discussion on when floating nurses or other personnel meet the CoP for nursing services, and there’s no need for a floor plan to show surveyors how patient rights are protected as they are transferred from one area to another between co-located healthcare entities.

Source: Patient Safety Monitor Journal

Well over 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, taking stock of lessons learned and next steps can be a challenge. The industry has encountered a lot in a very compressed time frame, so focusing on specific areas of success as well as ways to improve can help highlight the positive and provide a better road map for what’s to come.

Johonniuss Chemweno is CEO of VIP StarNetwork, an organization that has been running testing and vaccination events across the country with great success. He notes that state-level COVID-19 responses, however, have been patchwork at best.

“What we’re seeing on the ground level is a variety of messages and solutions depending on the state,” says Chemweno. “Some states have done a better job in their leadership attempting to get society back to what it was before COVID.”

Source: Healthcare Life Safety Compliance

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 brought the need for emergency preparedness in hospitals and medical facilities to the forefront of nearly every discussion in the industry. Today, with the delta variant fueling another surge in cases across the United States, the challenges continue. With different rules and regulations in every state, the protocols for controlling the virus vary depending on the hospital system.

Because utility infrastructure impacts every area of hospital operations, from the day a new hospital is opened and for many decades to come, it is important to understand key decision drivers when developing emergency preparedness plans.

Here, we will analyze several of the key drivers of hospital/medical facility planning and design required to meet future needs—including the need for energy efficiency, an understanding of available redundancy, and a comparison of first costs versus life cycle costs.

Source: Healthcare Safety Leader

Whether snow and ice removal is a duty for your facilities staff or for a contractor, remind them that they must clear all means of egress—not just the main entrances.

Under The Joint Commission’s Life Safety standard LS.02.01.20 requiring hospitals to maintain the integrity of the means of egress, element of performance 14 specifically cites snow and ice as a potential problem.

Source: Medical Environment Update

For years, the medical community has known that manual lifting of patients can lead to work related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSDs) from repeated and improper lifting of heavy objects (like human beings). The problem with manually lifting patients is that it always results in injury, Enos says—it’s not a matter of if, but when. If a nurse or caregiver manually lifts patients often enough, they will develop an WRMSD, even if they use proper body mechanics and technique. And injured staff means fewer hands to take care of patients.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data from 2014 shows that for hospital workers, the rate of musculoskeletal injuries due to overexertion was twice the national average (68 per 10,000). The rate for nursing home workers was over three times the average (107 per 10,000), and the rate for ambulance workers was over five times the average (174 per 10,000). More recent studies have only confirmed these numbers.