Hurricanes, floods, fires, and other natural and manmade incidents can strike anytime, anywhere. Faced with such disasters, hospitals must not only respond to the emergency but also maintain continuity of patient care under the most trying circumstances imaginable.
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 30, Issue 4
In January 2009, all eyes were on the Hudson River when a plane flying out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport crash-landed in the river after striking a flock of geese. Thanks to fast acting by the pilots, all 155 passengers survived, with few major injuries. Trouble started afterwards, though,...
The attack from a criminal syndicate in Eastern Europe was initiated through the emergency backup facility used by the 71-staffed-bed hospital many miles away, and it had infected many, if not all its servers. The SamSam ransomware did not affect patient life-support systems.
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 30, Issue 3
It’s been one year since Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, flooding the city and displacing tens of thousands of people. In one week, the Category 4 storm dropped 61 inches of rain and caused $125 billion in damages. The National Hurricane Center called Harvey “the most significant tropical...
In January 2009, all eyes were on the Hudson River when a plane flying out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport crash-landed in the river after striking a flock of geese. Thanks to fast acting by the pilots, all 155 passengers survived, with few major injuries. Trouble started afterwards, though,...
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 30, Issue 3
The ECRI Institute published its annual list of the top 10 health technology hazards facing healthcare in 2019. Longtime readers will recognize several hazards from ECRI’s 2018 and 2017 lists, such as cybersecurity and mattresses oozing body fluids.
Particularly for smaller facilities (or, I suppose, big places with multiple generators), consistently meeting the requirement for a 30% load during monthly generator...
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 28, Issue 12
CMS is offering providers a version of its online training for surveyors on the new emergency preparedness Conditions of Participation (CoP), set to go into effect November 15. Use this test—taken from the course material—to see how well you do before and after taking the training. The answer...