One of the many lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is that medical gas system capacity is an important consideration. I suspect a lot of folks are giving serious consideration to how best to shore up (and build upon) existing oxygen capacity, in the event that there is another significant influx of patients requiring oxygen therapies.

In 2022, the Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario embarked on a journey to prune away the rules that hindered care and comfort in their Department of Emergency Medicine. The project was lead by Louise Rang, MD, FRCPC, RDMS, who attributed their success to a fantastic team, and a budget line item for $48 (Canadian) of mini KitKat bars.

If you have reason to believe your hospital may be subject to a complaint investigation by your accrediting organization (AO) or CMS, the best strategy is to be prepared with documentation, including evidence of how the patient safety problem was handled and what, if any, corrective measures were taken, say compliance consultants and other experts.

There is not one hospital in the United States that is immune from disasters, whether caused by internal system failures or events externally directed at them and the communities they serve. Yet many of the nation’s healthcare organizations make preparedness a low priority and fail to build the resiliency necessary to continue or quickly restore operations in the face of significant events.

Hospital leaders only need to glance at the headlines from the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration’s Diversion Control Division to see the pervasiveness of drug diversion in hospitals.