COVID vaccinations officially not required

CMS issued a final rule May 31 officially rescinding the regulatory requirement to vaccinate healthcare staff in hospitals and other health organizations against the COVID-19 virus.

Warn your patients that bites from mosquitos, ticks, and other insects aren’t just an annoyance this summer, but also can carry dangerous and life-threatening diseases. The importance of taking precautions like bug spray and regular tick checks can’t be overstated to patients who spend a lot of time outdoors.

The Big Lots Behavioral Health Pavilion at Nationwide Children’s Hospital of Columbus, Ohio, faces $18,080 in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines for workplace violence hazards, the agency announced May 25. The hospital failed to protect employees, including nurses and mental health professionals, from patients whose bites, kicks, punches, and other assaults caused serious injuries, according to OSHA. The agency cited the Big Lots Behavioral Health Pavilion with one serious violation and one other-than-serious violation.

As I think has been established, when it comes to the vehicle of compliance (particularly as a function of sustainability), the color palette is very much an infinite set of shady grayness.

Establish an incident response team to handle decisions about high-risk pregnancy cases that may present dilemmas in your hospital’s emergency department (ED) as states continue to pass more restrictive abortion laws.

In August 2022, a Joplin, Missouri, woman who was 17 weeks pregnant suffered a placental abruption, or loss of amniotic fluid, and sought care at a local hospital. When that hospital said it could not save her fetus and could not provide her with a potentially lifesaving abortion, she sought care at a hospital 150 miles away, in a neighboring state.

This is the second part of our interview with Heidi Raines, the CEO and founder of Performance Health Partners and author of “Shared Voices: A Framework for Patient and Employee Safety in Healthcare“ about the importance of a culture of safety, what it can do for a hospital or clinic, and how to keep it running. Today we discuss tips on how to encourage staff input and how to gather leadership support. To read Part 1, click here.

If you have seen accrediting organizations get tougher in the last few years on physical environment deficiencies, be forewarned: It’s likely to get worse.

Pete began his shift in the hematology department. He liked to use the counter-mounted safety shield when opening specimens because he didn’t like to wear goggles over his eyeglasses. When it was time to read differential slides, he knew he couldn’t look into the microscope with his glasses on, so he reached up with his gloved hands, grabbed his frames, and set them on the dirty hematology workbench next to the scope.