Describe one of the safety committees your organization uses and how it reduces risk within your organization. Who are the general members of the group, how often do they meet, and is there a regulatory requirement that they report or publish notes? Is having safety committees a good use of the staff's time or would another method that still addresses the safety goal of this group be more efficient?
2) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), and the Joint Commission (JC) require that health care organizations maintain risk management programs to address infection control. Detail three measures that your health care organization (or any health care organization) could implement, beyond what is currently in practice, to support the delivery of safe health care services and avoid the spread of infection (e.g., placing hand washing devices at all of the public entrances of the health care facility).
3) Health care organizations continually face challenges from various regulatory and government agencies while also being bound by managed care organization (MCO) standards. Describe two key reform factors that you believe will need to be addressed by future health care workers or leaders and explain why. Additionally, what role does adherence to MCO standards play in your future health care vision?
4) The Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed into law in 2010, has three primary goals, which are to make affordable health insurance available to more people; expand the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the federal poverty level; and to support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower costs of health care generally.
As a leader wishing to promote and facilitate patient engagement by the organization, what are creative activities that can be designed to communicate the impact the ACA has on patients? Why is it important for consumers of health to understand health care laws and regulations?
Efficiency of Safety Committees
Having safety committees like the EC Committee is a good use of staff time due to their unique effectiveness in promoting a culture of safety and enabling a multi-disciplinary approach.
Rationale: While continuous quality improvement (CQI) tools or specialized safety software could address individual problems more quickly, only a diverse committee can:
Incorporate varied perspectives: An engineer, a nurse, and a security guard will see different hazards, providing a holistic view of risk that a single department might miss.
Ensure buy-in and accountability: When multiple departments own the safety goals, corrective actions are implemented more reliably across the organization.
2) Innovative Infection Control Measures
Healthcare organizations are mandated by OSHA, CMS, and JC to have robust infection control programs. Beyond current standard practices (like basic hand hygiene compliance and standard precautions), here are three measures a health care organization could implement to further support the delivery of safe services:
Implementing Automated UV-C Disinfection Robotics:
Detail: Deploying automated, no-touch UV-C light disinfecting robots for terminal cleaning of high-risk patient rooms (e.g., rooms with C. difficile or Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms (MDROs)).
Benefit: This measure supplements manual cleaning, reducing human error and virtually guaranteeing the eradication of residual pathogens on surfaces, which often survive standard chemical wipe-downs.
Quarterly and Trackable Privacy Curtain Replacement:
Detail: Standardizing the replacement of bedside privacy curtains on a strict, trackable, quarterly schedule (or replacing them with continuously disinfecting, non-mesh material curtains) rather than the common "change when visibly soiled" policy.
Benefit: Studies show curtains are high-touch surfaces that rapidly harbor pathogens, often escaping notice. A standardized, tracked replacement cycle ensures a major vector of cross-contamination is proactively removed.