Facility Management

By Larry Lacombe

When it comes to maintaining regulatory compliance, education is oftentimes the most difficult part. Particularly in situations when staff are accustomed to doing things in a certain way, it can be tough to persuade the team to adhere to new compliance-related procedures.

However, with more than 629 discrete regulatory requirements across nine domains, it’s apparent why compliance education is so crucial. With so many regulations, there’s a lot to consider.

When staff are properly educated, healthcare facilities will find it much easier to comply with regulatory requirements. Healthcare executives should consider the following three recommendations to appropriately educate healthcare facility staff on regulatory compliance. 

By Ronak Kadakia

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimates that about 8 million U.S. healthcare workers are potentially exposed to hazardous drugs in the workplace. This figure includes pharmacy and nursing personnel, physicians, operating room personnel, environmental services workers, workers in research laboratories, veterinary care workers, and shipping and receiving personnel. 

NIOSH has shown that these drugs can produce several adverse health outcomes such as abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, coughing, facial flushing, hair thinning, hair loss, dermatitis, irritation of skin and eyes, irritation of mucous membranes, menstrual cycle disruption, fetal loss, and even some forms of cancer.

As a result, NIOSH recommends that in tandem with other safety measures, healthcare workers use a Closed System Transfer Device (CSTD) throughout the hazardous drug-handling process [NIOSH 2004]. Although all CSTDs may not be equally protective, a study by Vyas in 2013 shows that CSTD-use can reduce hazardous drug contamination. 

By Tim Kelley

Continuous power supply is critical to maintain healthcare facilities and the health and safety of patients during emergency operations. As a result, hospitals must have robust power systems to continue operations in the event of a grid outage.  Most of these systems are powered by diesel generators.  As healthcare companies seek to improve their sustainability and to protect their power systems against risk, they are beginning to incorporate renewable energy into their distributed energy power systems. Sustainable options like solar power with battery backup can mitigate the risks of traditional backup power sources while also reducing environmental impact.

Mission-critical power systems

Traditionally, hospitals’ emergency backup power systems have been designed to remain off during normal conditions, and then to kick in immediately when grid power supply is lost. Most hospital power systems consist of (a) grid power, (b) a diesel generator, designed for emergency use only, (c) in some cases a Cogen / CHP generator to provide on-going distributed energy, and (d) controls to shut-down non-critical loads during an outage.  A distributed energy controller, such as those provided by Russelectric®, acts as the physical and system control conductor of the orchestra of generation and demand resources, providing safe, reliable, continuous power. 

By Scott Andrews

Most of us can probably recall a time not so long ago when we would run to Blockbuster to rent a movie or two for the weekend. It wasn’t that big of a deal to pop into a store and pick up the latest release, as they were often located in the same strip mall as your dry cleaner, grocery store, or favorite takeout pizza restaurant. All were typically within a few miles of most homes. It was a Friday night ritual for many of us.

At its pinnacle, Blockbuster had over 9,000 locations and revenues of nearly 6 billion.  They were on top of the world and a retail darling. However, they didn’t react to the changing desires of consumers or utilize the internet to evolve their business model quickly enough.  Sure, they tried to eliminate late fees (these accounted for nearly 20% of their revenue) – but would later reverse that decision – mail movies directly to you, and even flirted with streaming, but they were fundamentally a brick and mortar company. They couldn’t react to the changing times fast enough and ultimately Netflix drove them out of business.

So, what can health systems learn from Blockbuster’s experience? Adapt or die! They need to focus on customers’ needs and tastes or risk losing business to the competition. After all, whether healthcare wants to admit it yet or not, they are in the customer satisfaction business. They need to think about customer convenience, customer cost, and the quality of the experience they provide. They need to use tried and true measures like the lifetime value of a customer, customer acquisition, and customer retention models to better understand where to invest and how to attract customers.