Surveys are resuming in areas deemed safe for on-site visits even as the coronavirus pandemic continues its waves of surge and decline. With COVID-19 still on everyone’s mind, expect to be asked for documentation of inspection, testing, and maintenance (ITM) of critical systems and to show...
Be prepared to explain to surveyors how you will catch up with any inspection, testing, and maintenance (ITM) of non-critical systems that had been delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Update logs and records for any ITM done on critical systems, and make sure you can show that...
It’s not easy being an accrediting organization (AO) these days. DNV GL Healthcare has been in the business of deeming U.S. acute care and critical access hospitals for approval to bill Medicare for more than a decade.
But when the AO, whose parent company is in Norway, wanted to branch...
U.S. coronavirus deaths are likely understated, and the United States has relatively high COVID-19 mortality compared to 18 similar countries, a pair of recent studies published by the Journal of the American Medical Association shows. The United States has led the world in reported...
Seriously ill coronavirus patients placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation life support have a similar mortality rate as other patients placed on ...
On October 7, The Joint Commission (TJC) released a new Quick Safety alert on telemedicine and telehealth care. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the number of Americans participating in at least one...
Coronavirus droplets and particles “can linger in the air for minutes to hours,” said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their updated COVID-19 guidance on October 5. The...
Winter snow, ice, and cold should be a few weeks away—but it’s 2020, so we shouldn’t take anything for granted. Regardless, hospitals and clinics should run through their annual winter checklists now. Have teams ready to clear snowed-in exits, check for supplies of ice melt, and send ...
A pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus was predictable. Yet the experience itself was—and still is for many—unanticipated, says Deanna Scatena, BSN, RN, CCRN,...
With the goal of eliminating preventable medical harm, a new National Action Plan was released in mid-September by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) National Steering Committee for Patient Safety (NSC).
