McKnight’s
PDI announced Delivering the Difference, a contest recognizing those who show excellence in helping infection prevention and environmental services teams in health care facilities. To learn more or submit an entry at no cost, visit www.pdideliveringthedifference.com. The deadline for applications is Thursday, April 30.

Emily Rappleye, Becker’s Hospital Review
As purchasing power shifts from the baby boomers to millennials, they will have a growing impact on health care technology trends, according to a recent consumer survey from PNC Healthcare.

Andis Robeznieks, Modern Healthcare
Dr. Steven Safyer, CEO of the Montefiore Health System in New York, calls his system's new $152 million Hutchinson Campus the first "bedless" hospital.

Jamie Morgan, Health Facilities Management
After eliminating its paper-based, work request process and moving to a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), the environmental services department at RiverView Health in Crookston, Minn., became much more responsive to patient and staff requests, ultimately helping its organization raise its HCAHPS score from the 41st percentile to the 84th in less than six months.

Annie Garau, IDS News
Sidney Eskenazi grew up on the south side of Indianapolis during the Great Depression. His father died when he was 13 years old and, one week later, Eskenazi started his first job. Even during these hard times, he grew up watching his father, and later his uncle, donating food to charitable causes. This generosity inspired the young boy so that today he, along with his wife Lois, continue the trend of giving back, though on a much larger scale.

American Laundry News
Ecolab reports that it is the "first major corporate" participant planning to offset its electricity use as part of a Minnesota alternative energy program involving community solar gardens. The solar gardens will consist of shared solar panel sites with grid-connected subscribers, and will be developed under the Xcel Energy Solar*Rewards Community Program launched late last year.

3blmedia.com
The Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC), in collaboration with Practice Greenhealth, has concluded a survey to establish a baseline characterization of current plastic recycling activity across U.S. Hospitals and to better understand the challenges limiting plastics recycling in patient care areas. Receiving responses representative of 663 hospitals nationwide, two-thirds of respondents indicated that they were collecting 40 percent or less of what could be recycled. Results also show that while the cafeteria remains the most frequent area where plastics collection was taking place, high volume patient care areas are not far behind.

Healio Infectious Disease News
Despite calls by experts and policymakers for hospitals to screen patients for MRSA infections and isolate those posing high risk, and laws in several states that require testing on admission, the economic burden may be too much for hospitals to bear, researchers found.

Shannon Barnet, Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Recent research has shown that chlorine, which is commonly used by treatment plants to disinfect sewage, may not completely eliminate pharmaceuticals from waste, contributing to antibiotic resistance.

Robert Benjamin, MD, MPH, The Hill Blog
The latest tuberculosis outbreaks at schools in California and Kansas—exposing hundreds of children and adults to a potentially fatal bacterial infection—remind us that TB continues to pose a grave threat to the public’s health.

Shannon Barnet, Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Qualit
Hand hygiene compliance may be improved at hospitals by implementing interventions that include having administrative leadership in place, according to a study published in the American Journal of Infection Control.

Debra Beaulieu-Volk, FierceHealthcare
The perfect communicator doesn't exist. Rather, the art and science of exchanging messages is one we continue to hone throughout our lives, regardless of job title. As a writer, perhaps I'm more attuned to this process than some, but the lessons are universal. Here are a few loose communication rules that relate to topics included in this week's FiercePracticeManagement and beyond.

Nancy Laws, Huffington Post Blog
Strategic Leadership: The process of using well considered tactics to communicate a vision for an organization or one of its parts. Strategic leadership typically manages, motivates, and persuades staff to share that same vision, and can be an important tool for implementing change or creating organizational structure within a business.

Leslie Small, FierceHealthcare
Health care organizations that show a commitment to compassion enjoy a better bottom line as well as increased patient and caregiver satisfaction, according to a whitepaper from the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare.

Thursday, April 30
This webinar walks environmental services leaders through the maze of identifying, selecting and applying effective staffing standards for your facility.

Thursday, May 14
Panelists will discuss a plug and play strategy and toolkit to use during outbreaks.

The AHE Innovation Award presents a tremendous opportunity for companies and organizations to be recognized for innovative and improved products, processes, and technology advancements. The award is open to AHE members and non-members and requires a nominal application fee of $300 at the time of application. Apply now!

Today’s health care environmental services teams strive to go beyond cleaning, disinfecting, and caring for the environment. They seek to create clean and quiet healing atmospheres that lead to improved outcomes. But in order to achieve these quality outcomes, health care environmental services technicians must be well-trained and demonstrate competence in a number of key areas.

MyAHE is our branded members-only discussion forum. We recently migrated the discussions from iCohere to Learner Community, a new, interactive and exciting learning platform. On MyAHE, you can ask your most pressing environmental services related questions or answer questions posed by other professionals.

Julie Henry, HealthcareDIVE
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report estimating that insurance coverage expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) led to a $7.4 billion decrease in uncompensated care costs in 2014.

Leslie Small, Fierce Healthcare
The American Hospital Association (AHA) has joined the chorus calling for changes in the Hospital Readmissions and Reduction Program (HRRP) to avoid penalizing facilities for readmission factors beyond their control.