CMS eases use of COVID-19 survey tool, visitor requirements

CMS is lifting an almost two-year-old requirement for surveyors to use a COVID-19 focused infection control tool (FIC) as it reviews acute and continuing care facilities during surveys. Visitor restrictions are also lifted for now.

The coronavirus pandemic has illustrated the value of quality professionals and their work in healthcare, according to a recent whitepaper from the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ).

The pandemic has posed some of the greatest challenges to the healthcare sector in generations, and quality professionals have played key roles such as operating crisis command centers, activating telemedicine programs, and developing safety protocols for healthcare workers and patients.

Working the front lines of the early COVID-19 pandemic led to sleepless nights, anxiety, and depression for more than half of nurses surveyed for a new study.

“Nurses are already at risk for higher rates of depression and insufficient sleep compared to other professions, thanks to the stress of patient care and the nature of shift work,” said Amy Witkoski Stimpfel, PhD, RN, assistant professor at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing and the study’s lead author.

“The pandemic seems to have further exacerbated these issues to the detriment of nurses’ well-being,” Witkoski Stimpfel said.

Newsletter: Patient Safety Monitor Journal

Brad Truax, MD, principal consultant of the Truax Group, says he doesn’t think anybody has really done a good job at reducing distractions in the OR. As an example, he cites a 2021 study done by Alysha Nensi and company.

“Overall, most places continue to be plagued by distractions in the OR,” Truax says. “Virtually every case [study] that’s done has [noted] some sort of distraction, and that most recent paper that came out, the one by Nensi, basically showed we had over [261] distractions per case. It’s incredible.”

Newsletter: Medical Environment Update

Maintaining lab safety and protecting workers is an endless job, with old challenges arising just as frequently as new ones.

Sean G. Kaufman is CEO and founding partner of Safer Behaviors, a company that educates individuals and companies on the risks of infectious diseases and trains them on best practices and procedures to reduce overall health and safety risks. MEU spoke with Kaufman to ask him what laboratory safety problems he expects to see in 2022, and what can be done to face them.

Newsletter: Healthcare Life Safety Compliance

Healthcare security never sleeps. Literally—healthcare workers need around-the-clock surveillance, protection, and care from trusted security officials.

And it isn’t just physical security and workplace violence threats. Cybersecurity is a prominent issue in today’s healthcare settings with the potential for ransomware, phishing, and actors in cyberspace posing as someone else to enter healthcare databases and files.

It’s a world requiring security officials to constantly navigate changing environments and remain alert and up to speed.

Newsletters: Inside Accreditation & Quality

Expect hospital accrediting organizations to continue to update their standards, especially to align more with the language in CMS Conditions of Participation.

Newsletter: Healthcare Safety Leader

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.