The Joint Commission (TJC) surveyors have been true to their promise to begin surveying to the new COVID-19 vaccine requirement as soon as it became effective, and hospitals are already being scored for non-compliance.

Health equity should be added as the fifth element of a Quintuple Aim to guide healthcare improvement efforts, a recent Viewpoint article published by JAMA says.

In 2008, the Triple Aim for healthcare improvement was introduced, featuring improvement of population health, enhancement of the care experience, and reduction of costs. In 2014, the Quadruple Aim for healthcare improvement was created with the addition of workforce well-being as a fourth element to address healthcare worker burnout.

Healthcare improvement efforts also require a focus on health equity, a co-author of the recent Viewpoint article told HealthLeaders.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) urged healthcare employers to address a spike in workplace illnesses and injuries among their employees. There was a 249% increase in injury and illness rates in 2020 among nursing assistants, according to the agency, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

There was a 38.3% increase across private industry cases in days away from work (DAFW) in 2020, the BLS reported in its Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII), the bureau’s annual tally of nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses. The BLS also compiles an annual Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI).

Mac's Safety Space

I think we’ve established for the foreseeable future that the regulatory survey of the physical environment—and, by extension, how one prepares for that survey—is very much a question of numbers. And, as it should happen, when it comes to the survey piece, those numbers can be very small, indeed (based on a limited sample size).

Is it time to move toward a centralized verification organization (CVO)? Many organizations are doing so to streamline the credentialing process, reduce administrative redundancies, and lower costs, according to Jodie Chant, MPA/HCA, BHSA, CPCS, RHIT, president of Jodie Chant Consulting/Chant Medical Staff Resources, LLC.

Healthcare Life Safety Compliance

Healthcare security officers are often in a thankless position. When nothing happens, that’s a good thing. But hardly any security officers get praised when nothing happens—even though that means they’re doing a great job.

It takes a special breed of security officer to spend their days in hospitals and healthcare systems, risking their lives in a pandemic, to protect the interests and well-being of healthcare workers and patients. These are individuals who likely are not paid well, have second or third jobs, and are constantly fatigued and stressed.

Medical Environment Update

The one thing healthcare isn’t short on is data. The industry has data coming in from all directions, but that’s not always a perfect scenario—data that is duplicated, low quality, or siloed can present barriers to better analysis. For healthcare systems to improve the way they want, data needs to be organized and unified.

“Everyone sits on so much data,” says Gregg Church, president of 4medica. “Data is great, but if it’s not well organized into meaningful buckets, it’s not as useful for providers.”

So much of healthcare works in silos, Church notes. A physician may have access to a hospital’s centralized EMR, but what if the patient has seen physicians outside that hospital as well? “How do you know the data has been normalized and is accurate?” says Church. “We’ve always had plenty of data but never figured out how to use it and be more proactive and predictive of a patient’s behavior. Why aren’t we doing something more proactive with it?”

Patient Safety Monitor Journal

Medication non-adherence, particularly among senior patients, is a costly problem facing the American healthcare system. This issue results in an estimated $100 billion–$290 billion in annual costs, according to studies reviewed in the Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM). Other research cited by AIM indicates that 20%–30% of prescribed medications go unfilled by patients and approximately 50% of medications for chronic diseases aren’t used by patients as prescribed.

The latter statistic is striking, considering that older patients often suffer debilitating and costly effects of multiple chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and COPD. Additional studies reviewed by AIM estimate that medication non-adherence is responsible for nearly 125,000 deaths annually in the U.S.