COVID-19 has overwhelmed hospitals, their emergency rooms, intensive care units and created a huge demand for respirators, personal protective equipment and other resources. However, hospital management and staff can be better prepared for this pandemic or any other extraordinary circumstance that comes their way. Through DNV GL Healthcare’s NIAHO hospital accreditation program, which integrates the ISO 9001 quality management system, providers can create a calm, systematic and highly effective response plan that not only mitigates risks but also ensures that patients receive the best and highest-quality care possible without overwhelming hospital operations and their frontline and management staff.

During this presentation, attendees will:

• Learn how one urban safety net hospital used ISO 9001 and NIAHO to create an effective COVID-19 response
• Learn how to craft their own effective pandemic response using ISO 9001 and NIAHO
• Understand how ISO 9001 and NIAHO can create a clear roadmap to an effective COVID-19 response
• Discuss how the accrediting organization they use to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid participation is absolutely crucial

Piedmont Healthcare is a large hospital system in the Atlanta area, four of their hospitals are DNV GL Healthcare certified stroke centers – a designation they have held for the last 5 years. Since the date of certification and with each annual survey, the hospitals have experienced substantial growth through improved delivery of safe and top-notch quality stroke care. Discussion centers on the process of achieving a DNV GL Stroke Program Certification and how certification has positively impacted the Piedmont Healthcare System.

Although hospitals are always striving to improve patient safety, they have come under new pressures in recent years to better their performance. Since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began penalizing hospitals for unnecessary readmissions and weighing patient satisfaction scores, it has become imperative for inpatient providers to look at patient safety not as a compartmentalized function, but as a holistic mission involving all facets of hospital management.

As the nation's fastest-growing healthcare accrediting organization, DNV GL Healthcare emphasizes continuous quality improvement. It is always assisting its more than 500 hospital clients in improving patient safety and outcomes. One of the ways to accomplish that is to integrate risk management with patient safety. That may mean weighing the unreimbursed costs of properly sterilizing duodenoscopes versus avoiding infections that may cost more down the line to treat in terms of both money and goodwill. Successfully navigating such decisions can not only make the hospital setting safer, but will also improve the bottom line.

Insights and aspects of security management and the security vulnerability analysis (SVA) as this is applied under the National Integrated Accreditation for Healthcare (NIAHO) requirements and NFPA 99.

Confidence in an organization's sterile processing departments and processes can be accomplished and the risk of infection from improperly processed instruments can be reduced, if not eliminated if protocols are followed in a way that is a good fit for a hospital’s management structure and corporate culture.

CoxHealth, a six-hospital system in southwest Missouri, spent years trying to follow industry "best practices" to try and reduce its rate of readmissions, but to no avail. Instead, it created a successful readmission reduction program by closely analyzing its own discharge data, identifying high-risk patients and creating a focused, proactive readmissions reduction program in conjunction with local first responders. The result was a double-digit drop in readmission

Bob Goodner, a survey team leader and physical environment specialist for DNV GL Healthcare, will share his insights and discuss the aspects of security management and the SVA as this is applied under the National Integrated Accreditation for Healthcare (NIAHO) requirements and NFPA 99. Synjyn Dodd, System Director of Safety, Security and Emergency Management, Emerus Holdings, and Kelly Proctor, Physical Environment Sector Leader, DNV GL Healthcare will also share their insights.

Topics discussed include:

• Reviewing security measures and protocols for hospitals
• Assessing risks for workplace violence
• Enhancing workplace safety
• Conducting a thorough security vulnerability analysis