Discuss any revisions to masking policies with your staff, IC experts

The CDC recently revised its guidance on COVID-19 universal masking, but consult with your staff and infection control experts before making changes to your organization policies.

In the first two months of the coronavirus pandemic, there were no proven therapies for COVID-19. Now, there are several therapies for COVID-19, including Paxlovid, remdesivir, and monoclonal antibodies.

Sentara Healthcare has launched a community care program to provide neighborhood-level access to services for people who are on Medicaid or are uninsured or underinsured.

In an interesting dichotomy that can only truly exist in bureaucracies of a certain magnitude (enormity?) we have the announcement of the newest iteration of the Standards Improvement Initiative (which first reared its head in 2009) in which our friends in Chicago announce that there’s going to be a comprehensive review of existing standards and performance elements with an eye towards focusing on redundancies and items that don’t necessarily bring a lot to the party.

These threats are everyone’s game, and that means anyone in charge of life safety and healthcare security from a physical and technical perspective can be affected. And government regulators are taking cybersecurity very seriously.

Summer is officially over, and the clocks will fall back an hour in a month. It’s a time of transition as people bring out their fall clothes, enjoy spiced drinks, and ready themselves for colder weather and longer nights. It’s also time for your laboratory and staff to make the needed safety changes and preparations for fall if you haven’t already.

The most ubiquitous tools in healthcare include blood pressure cuffs (BPC) and other blood pressure (BP) measuring devices, and their importance can’t be overstated.

The Joint Commission (TJC) is training new life safety surveyors as fast as it can, wants to trim accreditation requirements that increase burden unnecessarily, and hopes to be caught up on surveys by the first of the year.

TJC is increasing its number of LS surveyors and they are all being trained that nothing can hang from or even touch sprinkler pipes unless it is part of the fire suppression system itself, warned Herman McKenzie, MBA, CHSP, director of the Standards Interpretation Group’s Physical Environment Department.