Hospital Employee Health 2009-03-01

Money matters: Your employees' health directly affects hospital's bottom line

In these tough economic times, it may seem like a luxury to go beyond the basics in employee health. But addressing the health needs of your workers from injury prevention to chronic disease management may be the smartest way to save money.

An antiviral insurance plan for pandemics

Have you stockpiled enough antiviral medication to provide doses for several hundred (or thousand) employees for about 80 days? Does your stockpile include more than one antiviral medication? Can you rotate it so it never expires?

Flu antiviral resistance forces new strategies

Antiviral resistance of one strain of influenza has altered this year's strategies for seasonal influenza. It also highlights mutability of the virus and the need for careful pandemic planning, federal health officials say.

HHS: Hospitals should stockpile antivirals for HCWs

In its "Guidance on Antiviral Drug Use During an Influenza Pandemic", the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services places the responsibility for stockpiling for worker protection on employers. This is an excerpt that specifically addresses health care employers:

Questions arise about pandemic use of respirators

In an influenza pandemic, health care workers may find their respirators difficult to tolerate for long hours. Without additional training, they also are likely to forget how to don the respirator properly or even which respirator model they should wear.

Even children pose hazard of lift injury

With the youngest and tiniest patients, pediatrics hardly seems like a hot zone for patient handling injuries. Yet that assumption of safety is itself a hazard. Pediatric caregivers treating children, adolescents, and young adults may be at significant risk of injury.

Seeking the upside of an aging work force

Aging doesn't have to mean a time of decline for the nursing work force. But it will take proactive measures to keep experienced nurses at the bedside and to keep them safe.

OSHA proposes new fit-test protocols

Streamlined protocols proposed by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration could make quantitative fit-testing more efficient.

Israeli HIV+ surgeon cleared to continue work

In a case that recalls the national turmoil during the Florida HIV dental outbreak in the early 1990s, investigators have determined that HIV provider-to-patient infections remain exceedingly rare.

Joint Commission Update for Infection Control: Bye, bye UTIs: Joint Commission and CMS putting heat on, but this mission is possible

But the real game changer on UTI prevention came a bit earlier when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced effective October 2008 that it would halt payment on additional costs generated by UTIs and two other infections (mediastinitis, catheter-related vascular infections).

Hospital Employee Health – March 1, 2009

March 1, 2009