Don’t gift surveyors the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of hazardous holiday decorations

Amy Compton-Phillips, MD, has only ever wanted to serve in healthcare. Thirty years ago, she started a practice on the East Coast. In 1993, she joined Kaiser Permanente as a front-line internist. Over her 22-year tenure, she worked as a physician and moved through a variety of administration roles, eventually serving as the physician director of population care, then finally as chief quality officer for the Oakland, California-based health organization. In 2015, Compton-Phillips joined Providence as the president of clinical care. Among leading healthcare and value outcomes at the Seattle, Washington-based health system, she also led the treatment for the first confirmed COVID-19 patient in the country. In the newest Women in Healthcare Leadership podcast episode, Compton-Phillips shares the organization’s COVID-19 learnings, how to improve patient safety and quality, and offers leadership advice.

Has your staff started dragging out the holiday decorations yet? Yes, it’s time for you to be Scrooge and remind them that while decorations can be fun for patients they can also pose a deadly fire hazard.

Inmates in the nation’s prisons were more than three times as likely to contract COVID-19 and more than twice as likely to die from it during the first year of the pandemic, when compared with the overall U.S. population, a new research letter shows. Writing this week in JAMA, University of California at Los Angeles researchers looked at COVID-19 cases and deaths among U.S. federal and state prisoners for 52 weeks from April 5, 2020, to April 3, 2021 and compared these rates with the overall U.S. population.

Not using or cleaning devices or equipment according to manufacturers’ instructions and improper management of medications were the top clinical compliance issues highlighted in the first Executive Briefing from The Joint Commission (TJC) since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2021 briefing was held virtually over three days but offered many of the same elements as those before it.

While there were no COVID-19-specific RFIs highlighted, the pandemic was well acknowledged as

Cyberattacks target every industry all the time, and healthcare is no exception. According to a recent IBM study, the average cost per healthcare cyberattack is a hefty $7 million. Despite numbers like this, cybersecurity often isn’t the C-suite’s top priority. How can CISOs in hospitals and other healthcare organizations demonstrate the value of strong cybersecurity while a host of other issues vie for leadership’s attention?

“To me, cybersecurity actually is a patient safety issue,” says Wes Wright, chief technology officer with Imprivata. “The industry did both areas a disservice long ago when they separated them.”

Clinicians and other professionals who see patients on a daily basis aren’t necessarily thinking about cybersecurity from a patient safety standpoint. That makes password requirements, security education and training, and other requirements seem less directly connected to patient care and safety—even though they actually are integral to both.