Clean those glucometers and trash the household spoons in surgery

Recommended steps to prevent workplace violence in hospitals include ensuring workers receive adequate training, having sufficient staffing levels, providing ongoing assessment of patients and residents for aggressive behavior and indicators, and appropriately adapting patients’ or residents’ care interventions and environment.

CMS wants hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare providers, “especially those delivering care in congregate care settings,” to protect patients against the transmission of COVID-19 and influenza.

On November 28, The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it would start referring to the monkeypox virus as “mpox,” in an attempt to stymie racist and stigmatizing associations.

When standards have been realigned in the past, certain “requirements” were dropped off, but some of those things never really went away, mostly because, while not requirements, those things were essential to an effectively managed program.

Workplace security. Life safety compliance. HIPAA privacy and security. They’re all intertwined with a common goal: safety for healthcare employees and patients.

With that, we’re providing some HIPAA compliance tips, data, and information from regulators as we work toward a new year.

At HCPro, our goal is to provide you with the most up-to-date information on changes that affect your organization. After reviewing our product line, we have decided to discontinue Healthcare Life Safety Compliance (HLSC) and provide you with a more robust and user-friendly experience. Starting in January, we are upgrading your experience to the Accreditation & Quality Compliance Center ’s basic access level while we stop producing weekly content for HLSC.

Those scenarios remind me of labs that suddenly need to use the emergency shower—and are quite unprepared for the event.

In the last few months, surveyors have been repeatedly tagging the failure to properly clean glucometers, and the use of common household items as surgical instruments. Both of these citations could put hospitals at risk of losing accreditation.

The Joint Commission (TJC) has several updated antibiotic stewardship elements of performance (EP) that will take effect on January 1, 2023. These EPs include requirements to have an antibiotic stewardship committee, someone to head the committee that then oversees selection of evidence-based guidelines (EBG), and a plan to turn data into action.

Use this checklist of questions to review and inform your winter emergency preparedness plan.