Safety

The regulations and standards set by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) set safety guidelines for areas such as: Administration, Central Supply, Clinical Services, Dietary, Emergency, Engineering, HealthCare-Wide Hazards, Heliport, Housekeeping, ICU, Laboratories, Laundry, Pharmacy, and Surgical Suite.

"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2001, hospitals reported 293,600 nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses to their personnel. Among U.S. industries with 100,000 or more injuries and illnesses, hospitals have the second highest rate of nonfatal injury or illness cases. Only Eating and drinking places have more injuries and illnesses. The incidence rate for hospitals is 9.2 injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers. The incident rate for industry as a whole is 6.1 injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers. During October 2000 through September 2001, OSHA performed 103 inspection activities in SIC code 806 - Hospitals. The most frequently sited violations were bloodborne pathogens, lockout/tagout, and hazard communication."

Source: OSHA Website 

As stated by the U.S. Department if Labor:

"The HCS provides people the right-to-know the hazards and identities of the chemicals they are exposed to in the workplace. When employees have this information, they can effectively participate in their employers' protective programs and take steps to protect themselves. In addition, the standard gives employers the information they need to design and implement an effective protective program for employees potentially exposed to hazardous chemicals. Together these actions will result in a reduction of chemical source illnesses and injuries in American workplaces." 

Source: Hazard Communication Standards (HCS)

From October 2004 until September 2005, OSHA issued 517 citations to the medical industry and fines totaling $318,037.  The average worker incidence rate was 3.8 per 100 full-time employees and the Medical Industry had 113 fatalities.

View the OSHA top ten areas of concern

Important Compliance Dates: 

February 17, 2006: Must prepare a SPCC Plan and have it certified by a Professional Engineer (PE) in accordance with the new SPCC rules

August 18, 2006: Plan must be implemented.

As a result of the previous two compliance dates, it is crucial that corporations within the Healthcare industry have a reliable system in place to assure that they are maintaining compliance.  An EPA inspection can summon such documents as: an Industrial User Permit, a Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure Plan (SPCC), a Phase II Stormwater Permits, NPDES Construction Stormwater Permits, and NPDES General Permits for Discharging Water directly into a body of water.  With the appropriate software in place, managing all of this information can often be facilitated into a much easier and less expensive program.

Environmental

According the EPA, approximately 1% of the total solid waste in the United States comes from the Healthcare Industry.  A study by The Society for Hospital Epidemiology of America (SHEA) reported by the EPA stated that the U.S. Healthcare industry is responsible for 6,670 tons of waste a day, 15% (about 1,000 tons) of which is infectious waste.  With so much waste and the effects of the Medical Waste Tracking Act (MWTA), among others, the EPA has set of 5 prioritized methods for the management of waste:

1. Reduction: which can be less expensive than the other four but requires a proactive mindset

2. Reuse: which, although it can reduce purchasing costs, can result in an increase in the sterilization costs

3. Recycling: turning used items into new operational products

4. Treatment and Disposal (basically, the least-preferred option): both can result in harmful effects on the environment and substantial costs

Types of Hazardous Waste Common to the Healthcare Industry

Click here to learn about a few of the Federal Statutes and Regulations associated with the Medical Industry

Some questions to ask yourself:

• What can our company do to stay competitive?
• Are we losing too much time, money, and other resources dealing with non-compliance?
• Are we using the most cost-effective methods to stay compliant?
• If not, are we looking to alternatives to our existing compliance system?

Please feel free to browse our website or contact us to see if ehsSUITE is just what your Healthcare Corporation needs to stay competitive.

Helpful Links

Healthcare Environmental Resource Center

EPA Profile of the Healthcare Industry

Hospitals for a Healthy Environment

• Powerful and Simple Data Visualization  
  The graphical analysis feature provided as a standard tool of ehsSUITE allows users to quickly and easily produce graphical displays of data and information using trend, bar, pie and many other data visualization techniques.
• The Ultimate Compliance Planner  

  The event and task feature of ehsSUITE  is a collaborative calendaring and scheduling application that synchronizes the agendas of your entire organization to provide users with flexible, more personalized means to instantly view, plan, manage, and coordinate their compliance schedules.

• ehsSUITE's Metadata Advantage  

  ehsSUITE is the only comprehensive metadata-driven application for compliance management.  What this means is that all information delivered to the user, such as calculations, validations, alarms, reports and dashboards, is defined in user-configurable tables and are easily managed using configuration wizards.

• Alerts and Alarms  
  Complimenting ehsSUITE's real-time data collection, analysis, and reporting is the ability to provide each user with customizable alerts and alarms.
• Data and Information in "Real-Time"  

  The ehsSUITE has a real-time data collection and handling application that allows users to connect to external sources of data, combine with manual data input and provide a sophisticated infrastructure capable of distributing data in real-time, allowing your company the ability to more efficiently manage data for the protection of air and water quality, land systems, and ground water.

• Built-in Language Translation  

  Ambiente - Umwelt - De omgeving - Environment

  From English to Spanish, from Spanish to German, from German to Dutch and back to English...ehsSUITE speaks any language with a simple click of a mouse.  The ehsSUITE platform is the only compliance management software with a built-in language translator.

• Set It and Forget It!  
  The beating heart of ehsSUITE is its notification manager.  As one great entrepreneur once said, "Set it and forget it!"  Once notifications are set in ehsSUITE, you can relax and focus on more important issues than managing a calendar and reminder list.  That is because ehsSUITE has the ability to proactively manage events, tasks, and deadlines.
• Binder-Free Zone  
  The ehsSUITE provides a simple and intuitive place for building and maintaining compliance plans for Environmental, Health and Safety, and Plant Security.
• Compliance Plans  
  The ehsSUITE provides a simple and intuitive place for building and maintaining compliance plans for Environmental, such as SPCC, SSM, SPCC, SWPPP; Health and Safety, such as Emergency Response, and Plant Security.
• Statistical Analysis  
  The ehsSUITE has a statistical analysis tool allowing analysis and visualization of data in many statistical formats.
• Notifications  
  The heart of ehsSUITE's communication hub is the notification manager.
• Procedures  
  The ehsSUITE has both an upload manager to import document-based procedures and a powerful editor to allow interactive procedures within ehsSUITE. 
• Manage Events and Tasks  
  The event and task management capabilities of the calendar tool integrated throughout ehsSUITE provides the user with a range of options from the simplicity of simply managing calendar-based events to the functionality required to manage complex compliance projects.
• Planning  
  The ehsSUITE calendar tool is a collaborative calendaring and scheduling application that synchronizes the agendas of your entire organization to provide users with flexible, more personalized means to instantly view, plan, manage, and coordinate their compliance schedules and tasks.
• Digital Displays and Dashboards  
  With ehsSUITE, web-based displays and dashboards have never been easier or more useful to build and maintain.  The page editors provide the users of ehsSUITE a simple and intuitive toolbar to configure powerful data visualization and communication displays and dashboards.
• Reporting  
  Reporting in ehsSUITE provides the user with the ability to generate any rich text report required by regulatory or company requirement. 
• Manual Input Forms  
  The ehsSUITE provides the ability to configure manual data entry to match your forms and legacy data collection systems. 
• Easily-Maintained Regulatory Database  
  The ehsSUITE provides a regulatory database that may be maintained by the user or may employ the optional BNA XML feed to keep regulations current.  All regulations are configured to conform to the BNA standard that provides the user enough flexibility to manage regulations by citation.
• PPE Management  
  The ehsSUITE manages safety equipment by providing the tools necessary for adding equipment, images associated with the equipment, procedures for proper use and deployment, and linking the equipment to an area or facility location.
• Incident Management  
  The ehsSUITE incident management system is a powerful work-process system allowing the user to easily configure incident management systems to correspond to the legacy systems and procedures in place.
• Field Data Collection  
  Field data collection is integrated within the ehsSUITE's powerful set of tools.
• MSDS Manager  
  The ehsSUITE allows the centralization of MSDS documents to an easier to manage location.  Display of the latest MSDS is easy and convenient through the ehsSUITE's web browser.
• Document Manager  
  The document management tool in the ehsSUITE allows the user to import and manage documents from MSDS documents to Corporate policies.  
• Data Recovery  
  Complimenting the automatic collection of external data, ehsSUITE provides both automated and manual systems for data recovery and substitution.
• Spreadsheet Tool  
  In addition to providing real-time data, configurable dashboards, reporting in Microsoft Office, and many other features that extend the business value of ehsSUITE software to our users, our Design and Development team has taken it one step further by adding a spreadsheet tool.
• ASP.NET Technology Integrated Into Version 4  
  ASP.NET AJAX is not just for developers!  AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) results in an interactive and client-centric web application which allows the management and display of information to be dynamic and interactive.