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When the tough get going: Emergency management and other considerations

Hospital Safety Insider, February 8, 2018

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First off (and apologies for the short lead time on this), but next week (February 13), CDC is hosting a webinar on the importance of assessing for environmental exposures during emergencies (and in general).

While this is likely to be some useful information as a going concern, you can also earn CEUs for tuning in. A summary of the program as well as registration information, etc., can be found here. Overall, I think hospitals had a pretty good track record of emergency response in 2017, but somehow these things never seem to get easier over time...

Another issue that I see starting to gain a little traction in the survey world is dealing with concerns relating to medical gas and vacuum systems; for the most part (I’m sure there are some exceptions, but I can’t say that I’ve run into them), folks in hospitals tend to rely on contracted vendors to do the formal inspection, testing, and maintenance of medical gas and vacuum systems, which tends to keep an in-depth knowledge of the dirty details at (more or less) arm’s length.

A couple of weeks ago, I received some information from Jason Di Marco of Compliant Healthcare Technologies (many thanks to Jason!) that I thought would be worth sharing with you folks. Of primary interest is a downloadable guide to medical gas systems (available here in exchange for your email address) that really gives a good overview of the nuts and bolts (as it were) of your med gas system. Jason also publishes a blog on the critical aspects of medical gas and vacuum system inspection, testing, maintenance, compliance, etc., where I found a fair amount of useful information.

Again, I can see the regulatory compliance laser focus starting to turn in the direction of all the systems covered under NFPA 99 and I can also see some of those prickly surveyor types trying to pick at the knowledge base of the folks managing these processes. So, in the interest of never having too much information, I would suggest getting a little more intimate with your medical gas and vacuum systems.

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