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Mac's Safety Space: If you have not had the opportunity to get back to the grind that is the hunt for expiring/expired product, please remember that a ton of products were purchased about a year ago 

Emergency preparedness and utility infrastructure in healthcare

As the COVID-19 vaccines roll out across the country and around the world, healthcare organizations can now pivot from frontline surge preparation and focus on futureproofing their facilities. While hospitals successfully implemented emergency facility upgrades and stopgap measures to meet pressing pandemic demands, now is the perfect time for healthcare leaders to take a more comprehensive approach to their utility infrastructure capacity and capabilities. No greater lesson can be provided than the freeze that ran through Texas, causing massive power outages and questions about the adequacy of existing infrastructure. These events can come unexpectedly, causing cascading failures, and they really don’t care that we already have our hands full. Here are key challenges and potential solutions that can help health systems prepare for and weather the next crisis.

Update your SOCs for off-campus buildings as TJC targets business occupancies

Be sure your facility electronic Statement of Conditions™ (eSOC) and Basic Building Information (eBBI) are up to date with accurate business occupancy information. Expect life safety (LS) surveyors to start inspecting many of your off-campus sites now that The Joint Commission (TJC) has a new LS section on business occupancies.

Starting with LS.01.05.10, the five new standards, with a total of 28 elements of performance (EP), were announced earlier this year and came into effect on July 1. However, TJC officials have been warning for years, including at last fall’s national American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE) conference, that it was going to be adding days to the LS survey so surveyors could do inspections at business occupancies with healthcare components.

Eyewash station inspections not needed for storage areas

In a recent edition of The Joint Commission (TJC)’s Perspectives magazine, the healthcare accreditor clarified that eyewash stations don’t have to be inspected weekly for its EC.02.02.01, EP 5 standard. It also clarified that eyewash stations are not needed for storage areas where chemicals are being stored, provided the chemicals aren’t being mixed or used in that space. Furthermore, eyewash stations are not needed for chemicals classified as irritants on their safety data sheet (SDS). And finally, the clarification said that “strict compliance with ANSI eyewash standard Z358.1 is not required.”

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The CMS Conditions of Participation and Interpretive Guidelines

Compliance with the Conditions of Participation (CoP) is required to meet Medicare and Medicaid hospital regulations. While CMS posts updates to the CoPs on its website, they are often difficult to search and lengthy, not to mention tedious to print.

This is where HCPro comes in! We have taken the most recent version of CMS’ CoPs and the corresponding Interpretive Guidelines (IG) and reprinted them in an easy-to-use format to simplify your job. CMS updates the CoPs a few times a year. This new edition contains the most recent CoPs and Survey and Certification memos, which include new requirements on discharge planning, burden reduction, and antibiotic stewardship.

This resource:

• Includes CMS survey protocol
• Provides the most recent EMTALA IGs
• Offers the latest CoP IGs from CMS
• Acts as an easy-to-read hard-copy reference of CoPs and IGs, which are otherwise cumbersome to reference online

See in stores now!

Brian Ward
Editor
bward@hcpro.com


HCPro
35 Village Road, Suite 200
Middleton, MA 01949
800-650-6787
http://www.hcpro.com

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This award-winning monthly resource simplifies confusing code references so you can better protect your facility. You need Healthcare Life Safety Compliance to keep you up to date on the latest changes to the Life Safety Code (LSC), as well as The Joint Commissions Life Safety standards, NFPA codes, and related fire protection provisions to ensure the safety of patients, visitors, and employees.

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Keeping safety professionals up to speed with the always-changing policies of OSHA, CDC, EPA, and other healthcare regulatory agencies. Discover workplace health and safety tips written with facilities like yours in mind.