Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality
As health care continues its shift to pay-for-performance, the patient becomes the most important asset in health care. But, how do hospitals make sure the patient is completely satisfied?

CleanLink
Pro Quality Cleaning, Mechanicsburg, PA, uses advanced cleaning equipment to make commercial facilities safe, healthier, and more appealing. The company cleans facilities such as office buildings, large concert venues, manufacturing facilities, hospitals, movie theaters, and other large commercial buildings.

CleanLink
A reader asks: "I realize that using microfiber cloths correctly with suggested laundry procedures can reduce cross contamination. If I cannot use hot water, bleach or other harsh cleaners, nor can I use hot drying, how do I know the microfiber cloths are truly disinfected?"

Tracey Hups, Facility Care
When a patient goes to a hospital for treatment, he or she deserves a safe environment. Facilities must continually evaluate their safety practices to ensure they are doing everything they can to safeguard patients from adverse events such as medical errors, health-care-associated infections and further injuries.

Healthcare Facilities Today
After a fire at New York Methodist Hospital began in a trash chute, apparently caused by soldering during a necessary repair, ASHE suggested that members should ensure that all contractors and subcontractors are familiar with hot work procedures, according to an article on the organization's website.

Sean Martschinke, Facility Care
A nursing home and rehab center in the San Jose, California, area hired a local interior designer to remodel its facility. The center’s management told the designer they wanted residents in the facility to have more of a "luxury experience" living there.

Luc Lenaerts, The Guardian
A hospital isn’t simply a place where the sick are nursed back to health, or where the partnership of medical technology and human expertise help us to get well. A hospital is, in fact, a potent symbol of society – and an indicator of how we want society to develop.

Digital Journal / ReleaseWire
Understanding the disparity between America's need for proper medical waste disposal and the Medical Waste Management solutions available currently, the company has published a definitive guide to medical waste and its proper disposal to educate and create awareness among health care institutions and the masses.

Linda R. Greene, RN, MPS, CIC, Infection Control Today
Infection prevention is a constantly changing field. Tremendous challenges face the infection preventionist (IP), including new emerging and re-emerging diseases, antibiotic resistant organisms, serious; often life-threatening diseases such as C. difficile, public reporting of health-care-associated infections (HAIs), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) policies to limit payment for hospital-acquired conditions and complications.

Joe Crowley, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News
One of the bigger buzz terms flying around health care circles is prevention plans. A cursory google search of "prevention plan" brings back a staggering 39 million results, with the first page boasting everything from fire and accident, to heart attack and stroke prevention plans.

Infection Control Today
Infection Control Today invited manufacturers of personal protective equipment (PPE) and antimicrobial textiles to share their perspectives on key issues relating to pandemic preparedness as well as proper donning and doffing techniques.

Infection Control Today
Proper laundering and handling are important in achieving and maintaining the hygienically-clean quality of health care fabrics and textiles delivered to the point of care, according to a new review that highlights evidence-based strategies to inhibit potentially serious contamination. The review, based on findings and recommendations from peer-reviewed studies, as well as current standards and guidelines, is published online in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

Linda Goss, Facility Care
Health-care-associated infections (HAIs) pose a constantly evolving threat to hospitalized patients, caregivers and, by extension, health care providers as a whole. This reality makes infection prevention the job of everyone in the hospital — not just the caregivers and infection prevention specialists.

Bob Kehoe, Health Facilities Management
Gregory Gicewicz, board president of the Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC), looks at what has been learned since a report published in May 2014 in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal identified hospital linens traced to an off-site launderer as the agent of transmission for a deadly fungus that resulted in five deaths at a pediatric hospital.

Max Green, Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality
In a recent blog post for Johns Hopkins' Armstrong Institute, health services researcher Jill Marsteller, PhD, outlines steps that care teams can take to plan for success when designing quality improvement projects, in order to better understand why an idea succeeds or falls short, and how to effectively repeat it.

James Richman, Fast Company
Authoritative leaders are most effective in vision casting, as well as providing clarity for the vision. Such leaders know how to motivate people by showing how their work fits into the company's bigger vision. They also know how to maximize the commitment of their people to the goals and strategy of the organization.

Tuesday, June 30
Successful emergency preparedness and management involves coordination, collaboration, drills, and well-documented plans of action already in place well before a catastrophic event or emergency ever occurs. Collaboration and coordination between facility leaders across multiple disciplines is essential to ensure the safety and care of patients and/or residents, as well as for the timely mobilization of resources needed for emergency response operations.

Duration: 60 minutes
Cost: AHE Members Free; Non-Members $59

New this year includes a Certified Healthcare Environmental Services Technician Workshop, Express Labs, and exciting pre-conference events. Open registration is available until July 31, 2015.

Take part in one of AHE's Train the Trainer workshops and return to your facility prepared to train your environmental services staff to become Certified Healthcare Environmental Service Technicians, CHEST... and start making significant contributions to the patient experience of care, the facility, the profession, and the community!

Ronald Kovach, Healthcare Facilities Today
Whatever its much-debated merits and demerits, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) appears to be a game-changer in the world of health care facilities design and construction.