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In 2001, the Institute of Medicine released Crossing the Quality Chasm, a landmark report that signaled a new era in the healthcare industry’s view of patient care quality. Fast forward 20 years, and healthcare systems are still coming to grips with the report’s conclusion that clinicians must look beyond the one-on-one relationship between caregiver and patient and toward a more holistic healthcare journey.

Our healthcare landscape is evolving day by day. Members, patients, consumers, and caregivers expect more from the healthcare system than ever before.

CMS has joined with OSHA in suspending its mandate for COVID-19 vaccination of healthcare workers, but says hospitals are welcome to enforce the requirement voluntarily.

Didn’t have time to gather your thoughts yet on OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) requiring vaccination and testing for employers with 100 or more employees? You can still offer up your two cents!

OSHA has extended the public comment period until January 19, 2022. (The original comment deadline was January 4.)

The holidays are a stressful time for many people, even without the added burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), increased alcohol and substance use, and increased political polarization. A 2014 National Alliance on Mental Illness study showed that 64% of people with mental illness report holidays make their conditions worse.

That stress isn’t limited to patients; it affects healthcare workers as well. Most readers will be able to come up with a couple of sources of tension—such as money and gifts, familial and interpersonal relationships, or travel and work.

Conduct your drills for maternal hemorrhage and maternal severe hypertension/preeclampsia by the end of 2021. Be sure they include a multidisciplinary team to debrief and evaluate how well you performed.

Staff education and orientation on procedures to handle those emergencies will be expected by January 2022.

Set to take effect in July 2020 but delayed six months by the COVID-19 pandemic, The Joint Commission (TJC) has signaled it is expecting hospitals to be caught up on their maternal health standards as surveys go forward.

The two Provision of Care standards, which together feature 13 elements of performance (EP), were prompted by national concerns about worsening maternal morbidity and mortality rates, especially among women of color or from at-risk population.

Many years ago, I was hired to perform a safety audit for a laboratory. As I walked through one department, an employee asked what I was doing. When I remarked that I was looking for safety issues to keep her safe, she asked, “What are you keeping me safe from?” It was the right question. This employee was working in a lab where there were several safety violations and she didn’t notice any of them. Was it a lack of education? Was it a product of a poor lab safety culture? Why didn’t she see the danger she was in?

A key element of an emergency preparedness plan is assessing how the staff and facility handled the disaster at hand and what lessons were learned for the next event.

In July 2019, after three earthquakes in two days, including a 7.1 magnitude temblor that was the largest earthquake in California in two decades, Ridgecrest Regional Hospital in Ridgecrest, California, had several takeaways, said Stephanie Meeks, MBA, HACP, the hospital’s emergency management and regulatory compliance manager.

Develop a protocol for any above-ceiling work, schedule weekly inspections of eyewash stations, and ensure that fire extinguishers are not blocked.

Those actions might steer you clear of common deficiencies found by surveyors from The Joint Commission (TJC), said Herman A. McKenzie, MBA, CHSP, director of engineering for TJC’s Standards Interpretation Group during the accreditor’s 2021 Executive Briefing.

The briefing was the first held by TJC since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and took place virtually over three days in mid-September.