• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Don't forget to review your facility before you add on to it

Executive Briefings Digest, April 7, 2003

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Executive Briefings Digest!

Under environment of care (EC) standard EC.3.2.1, from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, hospitals must review construction or renovation that could affect patient care in certain ways-such as infection control, air quality, and noise-and minimize these risks. If you have an ace at risk assessment in your facility, think about having him or her take it a step further to include all hospital functions that a construction project could affect, says Kenneth Weinberg, PhD.

Construction review team members should ask themselves how a given project creates hardships or introduces new risks to the EC seven plans of safety, security, hazardous materials, emergency management, fire prevention, medical equipment, and utilities. This discussion should occur before a project actually begins. Despite the concerns surrounding construction in hospitals, "people are learning mostly by experience rather than preplanning," which isn't the best approach, Weinberg says.

You can also take the tack of looking at construction under a hazard vulnerability analysis. Hospitals typically associate this analysis with emergency management, but the theory behind using it for construction projects is the same, says Steven MacArthur, safety consultant with The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro Inc.

Source: Briefings on Hospital Safety

http://www.hcmarketplace.com/Prod.cfm?id=45&S=EEBD

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Executive Briefings Digest!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive