Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/626854
6 YEAR IN REVIEW families, as well as fostering team- work between and among health- care providers. Discharge practices to post- acute, home care. Hospital dis- charge can be a critical moment in a patient's care. A study from the early 2000s found nearly 20 percent of patients experience an adverse event within three weeks of dis- charge, and many of those events could be prevented. is important safety issue necessi- tates more attention in 2016 thanks to the launch of the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model in April. e CCJR will make hos- pitals responsible for the care qual- ity and cost of joint replacement patients for a full 90 days post-dis- charge, giving hospitals a financial incentive to focus on this import- ant patient safety issue. Workplace safety. It is hospi- tals' duties to keep patients safe, but some experts argue patients cannot be safe unless healthcare workers feel safe themselves. "If healthcare providers are safe, then we will have safer patients," says Deborah Grubbe, a healthcare consultant with DuPont Sustain- able Solutions. "Because health- care providers won't have to focus on their own safety and thinking they'll get hurt, [they'll] be able to spend all their energy and alertness in providing good care for the pa- tient." is sentiment applies to a myr- iad of worker safety issues, from needlestick injuries to injuries from liing patients to fear of being as- saulted by a patient. Unfortunately, these staff safety issues are still a problem moving into 2016. To that end, the U.S. De- partment of Labor's Occupational Safety & Health Administration launched a webpage in December 2015 providing information and strategies for healthcare workplace violence awareness and prevention. Hospital facility safety. Issues with hospitals' facilities can some- times put patient safety at risk. Several times in 2015, the safety of hospital patients was compromised or nearly compromised because of building or maintenance problems. For instance, a Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration report released in April cited one Florida hospital's handling of a sewage leak as a patient safety issue, including its failure to ensure the sewage was cleaned up properly and failure to conduct an infection control risk assessment. e investigators also reported finding live rats above the affected ceiling tiles and air condi- tioning supply vents leaking con- densation over food prep tables. Legionnaires' disease is another is- sue tied to the structure of a hos- pital, as Legionella outbreaks "are commonly associated with build- ings or structures that have com- plex water systems, like…hospi- tals," according to the CDC. In 2015, several organizations from the healthcare, construction and engineering industries formed a task force to create uniform guide- lines for the heating, ventilation and air condition of operating rooms, sterile processing departments and endoscope procedure rooms to en- sure patient safety. In light of these issues and events, hospitals may wish to consider re-evaluating the maintenance pro- tocols for their facilities to ensure patient safety this year. Reprocessing issues. e is- sues surrounding certain medical scopes and their link to infections resurged in 2015 and are sure to carry over in to 2016 as healthcare providers hone best practices to prevent further scope-related in- cidents. In fact, the ECRI Institute listed "inadequate cleaning of flexi- ble endoscopes before disinfection" and the resulting risk of infection at the top of its 2016 Top 10 Health Technology Hazards list. Experts have emphasized the im- portance of using the right tools and following protocol to the letter to prevent infection, while some hospitals have begun culturing scopes aer reprocessing to check for bacteria. Meanwhile, some members of an FDA advisory panel recommended mandatory steriliza- tion of duodenoscopes to prevent spread of infection. Sepsis. According to the CDC, more than 1 million cases of sepsis occur each year, and up to half of people who get sepsis will die, mak- ing it the ninth leading cause of dis- ease-related deaths. While sepsis is not a new patient safety concern, it gets a new spotlight for 2016 thanks to CMS: e agency added the Se- vere Sepsis and Septic Shock Early Management Bundle to the fiscal year 2016 Inpatient Prospective Payment System Final Rule. "What's driven much of CMS' re- sponse to sepsis is the gradual in- crease in sepsis across the nation," Edward O. Blews III, MD, assistant professor of infectious disease and associate medical director of hos- pital epidemiology at Loma Linda (Calif.) University Medical Center,