A newly issued OSHA update to its enforcement guidelines for stopping the spread of tuberculosis (TB) in health care settings provides inspectors with new tools, including an expansion of what types of facilities are covered, to prevent the disease and further strengthens the agency's recently announced inspection emphasis in the hospital and residential care industries, one focus of which is heading off TB transmission.
OSHA's newly rolled-out areas of emphasis for compliance officers conducting hospital and nursing home inspections -- focused intently on ergonomic issues, bloodborne pathogens, workplace violence, tuberculosis and slips, trips and falls -- comes after lengthy and intense pressure by health care worker advocates, particularly the nurses' lobby, on the agency to increase inspectors' concentration on inpatient facilities, Washington sources say.
Industry representatives, particularly from small business, have told OSHA they believe existing data on work-related infections among health care workers (HCW) is inadequate to justify an expansive potential rule tackling infectious diseases in hospitals and other patient care facilities.
OSHA should go back and start from scratch on its efforts to draft a new federal rule to reduce the risks of health care workers contracting infectious diseases, small business representatives say, calling for a more piecemeal regulatory approach that possibly exempts some segments of the industry and holds employers in compliance as long as they follow official guidance materials issued by federal agencies.
House Republican leaders blocked an attempt by the labor committee's top Democrat to shield an OSHA rulemaking on infectious diseases in health care from the procedural requirements in a newly passed bill that adds new layers of review to the federal regulatory process.
OSHA and NIOSH are urging health care employers to craft “fatigue risk management plans” to head off risks to workers responding to Ebola situations where officials are concerned that health responders have been put in danger by protracted stress-filled work shifts.
A bipartisan bill in the Senate would set aside federal resources to create “treatment hubs” for Ebola cases -- legislation that comes as health care worker advocates press major concerns with OSHA and other federal health officials about the potential for more Ebola cases to appear in U.S. hospitals and lead to alarm about worker exposures.
The government's lead agency in regulating how thousands of clinical laboratories reliably conduct testing on human specimens is urging state health officials to ensure that labs follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines in specimen collection to stop the potential spread of Ebola – and hew to safety mandates and guidelines including those issued by OSHA as part of infection control.
A key safety equipment trade group is endorsing a set of new international specifications for choosing personal protective equipment (PPE) for stopping the spread of Ebola among health care workers and patients, saying selection of PPE should be tied to established performance standards and not “panic buys” stemming from Ebola-related crises.
OSHA considers the core principle that health care employees should be made “whole” compensation-wise if they are temporarily removed on a medical basis from their work settings an essential aspect of the agency's planned rule to help prevent the spread of airborne- or droplet-based infectious diseases, officials said Wednesday (Nov. 12) after small employers raised concerns about the provision.