The Last 5 Blogs

One of the most challenging aspects of a survey is demonstrating that your medical record documentation meets accreditation and certification standards. Weeks and months of effort are swept away in an instant when practitioners fail to appropriately document the care…

You’re sitting in the exit conference of a CMS survey. It’s been a pretty rough week. The survey hasn’t gone very well and you’ve steeled yourself for the bad news. Sure enough, the message comes through loud and clear. Your hospital has sustained condition-level…

We know that patients have a right to receive visitors while they are in the hospital. This includes designating a support person who can be with the patient. In some cases, the support person can make decisions on the patient’s behalf about who may or may not…

The use of standing orders (protocols) are becoming more and more widespread in hospitals across the United States. So how do you assure that their use in your hospital will be compliant to CMS expectations? The interpretive guidance in Appendix A of...

I surveyed a hospital several years ago and asked various staff about their role in the event of a disaster. The answer was always the same: “I report to my unit and await instructions from my supervisor”. I asked the hospital’s emergency preparedness coordinator…