Review your workplace violence prevention program to ensure staff are protected from violent patients. That includes the use of engineering controls. A solid program might not only save your staff from harm, but also save your facility from deficiencies during survey and hefty fines from OSHA.
OSHA’s two COVID-19-related emergency temporary standards (ETS) requiring specific worker protections as well as vaccinations are both on hold for now but you may still be held responsible for those worker protections.
In 2022, CMS plans to restart its pilot project to improve validation surveys but is likely to continue pressure on accrediting organizations (AO) to be more vigilant in finding deficiencies in physical environment (PE), infection control (IC), fire safety, and patients’ rights.
Healthcare Safety Leader asked Brad Keyes, CHSP, owner of Keyes Life Safety Compliance and a consultant and expert on the Life Safety Code®, for tips about safety and compliance with washing machines and dryers in patient laundry rooms in...
Check manufacturer’s instructions for use (IFU) as well as nationally recognized standards when updating your policy on the regular maintenance and cleaning of washing machines and dryers used for patient belongings.
Surveyor concerns will be about infection control (IC), says ...
Plan now for how you are going to flush toilets if you lose water for several hours or even days, or you might find yourself and your staff having to deal with toilet paper disposal by hand.
During a prolonged and extreme cold snap in February 2021, Houston Methodist West Hospital lost...
Q: We just had a CMS validation survey and received a finding under K-tag K-926 for not having good enough documentation of training on oxygen transportation. How many times a year do we have to give training on this? Is annual plus new-hire training enough?
In the last Healthcare Safety Leader, we noted the caustic chemicals found in the basement of a hospital by Ernest E. Allen, ARM, CSP, CPHRM, CHFM, a former life safety surveyor and now Life Safety consultant with HealthTechS3, then asked, “What else should be in the basement...
In case you missed it, here’s a compilation of breaking news from the Accreditation & Quality Compliance Center since Healthcare Safety Leader was last published.
