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Expect door repairs to take time as CMS re-quirements create backlog of parts

Healthcare Life Safety Compliance, October 1, 2018

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Healthcare Life Safety Compliance.

Be prepared to ask for time extensions from your accrediting organization and CMS to bring doors into compliance in your facility. As hospitals deal with ligature risks and Life Safety Code® (LSC) issues, there is a growing backlog of the needed parts and equipment, making it difficult to meet a regulatory requirement to fix deficiencies within 60 days.

You may have to ask for the time extensions more than once, warns Ernest E. Allen, a former surveyor with The Joint Commission (TJC) and now a patient safety account executive with The Doctors Company in Ohio.

“This is a big issue that is only getting bigger,” predicts Tyson G. Prickett, vice president of JT Service Contractor Corp., a regulatory compliance consulting firm in Coral Springs, Florida.

“As more facilities now come into compliance with the annual fire door inspection and now conduct risk assessments for the behavioral units, which identify door issues, there will be nothing but more orders placed and longer wait times to get the products,” says Prickett.

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Healthcare Life Safety Compliance.

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