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Review your water management plan as CMS intensifies focus on Legionella

Healthcare Life Safety Compliance, November 1, 2018

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A good water management plan begins with your facilities management team and a solid risk assessment of your water distribution and storage systems, which must include a walk-through of your hospital with your onsite plumbing expert.

CMS recently updated a memo to its survey teams on reducing the risk of Legionella to specifically note that facilities must have a water management plan that surveyors can review. That plan should be written and managed by a multidisciplinary committee of people from throughout the hospital with a stake in water use, says Bryan Connors, MS, CIH, HEM, the Healthcare Practice Director at Environmental Health & Engineering Inc., in Newton, Mass. Connors is certified as both an industrial hygienist and a healthcare environmental manager and works as a consultant for hospitals and other facilities, including the management of water systems.

The CMS memo, which was first published last year and then updated this June, continues to point to the ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 188 “Legionellosis: Risk Management for Building Water Systems” and best practices set out by a 2016 CDC toolkit on developing a water management program to reduce the growth and spread of Legionella in buildings as key resources.

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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