According to a survey done in 2017, which is conducted on a large sample of Americans by Consumer Reports, about 30% of Americans did not clean out their medicine cabinets for over a year and nearly 20% have not done so in the last 3…
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Combating Patient-Generated Violence with Safe Hospital Design
The mission of why healthcare exists is to heal and restore health, but that can be difficult to accomplish if the built environment is not designed with security in mind. A safe environment is a major contributor to healing, yet violence generated by patients and…
5 Most Common HIPAA Violations Physicians Should Watch For
Hospitals are the most common violators of HIPAA privacy regulations, followed by private practices, outpatient facilities, pharmacies and health plans, according to a March 3 report from the American Medical Association. HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, which is responsible for enforcing HIPAA privacy rules, regularly…
Arbour Hospital Pays OCR $65K Over HIPAA Right of Access Violation
The $65,000 settlement with Arbour Hospital is the seventeenth made by OCR under its HIPAA Right of Access Initiative, an agency compliance priority. The Department of Health and Human Services announced it reached a $65,000 settlement with Massachusetts-based Arbour Hospital, which resolved potential violations of…
Ramping Up for COVID-19 Vaccine Waste
Good news: the COVID-19 vaccine schedule is moving along in the U.S. and expected to pick up substantially very soon. Over 80 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered from December 2020 until mid-March 2021, and the Biden administration is aiming to see that three…
Make the workplace safer for health care employees
The deadly gunfire that erupted at a Minnesota medical clinic earlier this month sharpened the pangs of a Louisiana man’s grief even as it hardened his resolve to better protect health care workers from workplace violence. Gene Sausse owns a small business in New Orleans.…
The COVID-19 vaccine rollout is going to create a massive waste management problem
An unintended consequence of COVID-19 safety procedures has been a surge in trash, from face masks to gloves to, now, the discarded syringes and needles from COVID-19 vaccines. If laid end to end, the needles from the number of vaccine doses needed to inoculate the…
Unmasking the pandemic’s pollution problem
Tanveer Adyel began to notice the trash in March. This was early in the COVID-19 pandemic. He saw latex gloves and blue, disposable masks littering his garden and street. Other types of personal protective equipment, or PPE, including face shields, were also among the trash.…
Needlestick hazards and bloodborne pathogen standards accompany vaccine rollout
The ramping up of vaccination for COVID-19 comes with rising concerns about bloodborne pathogen (BBP) exposure for vaccinators and the need for personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as steps to prevent needlestick injuries and other BBP program requirements. The Centers for Disease Control and…
Top challenges to HIPAA compliance
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA is a challenging Act for thousands of companies in the United States. It sets the standard for sensitive patient data protection in the country. If your organization deals with sensitive healthcare data, ensuring HIPAA compliance is…