Gary Cohen, GreenBiz
Last week, hundreds of changemakers from hospitals, health systems and medical products or supplier companies gathered in Dallas to learn and compare notes at the 13th CleanMed Conference.

Dave Lubach, facilitiesnet.com
Building occupants can aid or sabotage energy efforts. One reason for the latter is that occupants often simply forget to engage in efficient behaviors.

Matt Poe, American Laundry News
It’s common to see healthcare employees wearing scrubs.

Zack Budryk, Fierce Healthcare
Common misperceptions persist regarding the role of Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys, Medicare officials write in a commentary for the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Facility Executive
Only one-third of workers in 17 of the world’s leading economies are highly engaged, with the United States ranking sixth behind frontrunners India, Mexico, and United Arab Emirates, according to The Steelcase Global Report: Engagement and the Global Workplace.

Thom Wellington, Occupational Health and Safety
An alarming 5 percent of all hospital stays result in readmissions due to infections that patients acquire in the health care facility.

Infection Control Today
For this industry roundtable, ICT invited manufacturers to provide information on sporicides, quaternary ammonium and advanced hydrogen peroxide, to assist infection preventionists, environmental services personnel and purchasing managers in making product-evaluation decisions.

Jim Wappes, CIDRAP
Bacteria carrying the very worrisome MCR-1 resistance gene—which makes the last-line antibiotic colistin useless against them—have been found in human and animal samples for the first time in the United States, according to a report today in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and a statement by federal health officials.

Maria Lockwood, Superior Telegram
It’s squat and purple with goofy eyes. Cute as it is, the glow germ has a serious purpose. The little critter is reminding staff at Essentia Health to wash their hands well.

Lorn Clancey, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
In spite of innovations in patient care technology, healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) such as wound sepsis are continuing to rise, and hospitals are paying the price.

Forbes Coaches Council, Forbes
Leadership and influence are related (and even sometimes used interchangeably), but they’re not one and the same.

Vijay Govindarajan and Hylke Faber, Harvard Business Review
In our work with leaders, we see that great ones grow themselves and their organizations by deliberately working on three areas.

Plan your education for 2016. Visit AHE’s brand-new 2016 ENGAGE site to learn more about educational courses, podcasts, webinars, and events.

AHE is gathering input from environmental services departments across the country to identify baseline staffing productivity standards. The results of this data gathering will be used in building staffing models and providing metrics for environmental services directors. You can be a key player in identifying and establishing these important staffing criteria for our industry.

This new and intensive 20-hour certificate program will provide Environmental Services leaders and professionals with the requisite knowledge to meet the CMS requirements for a "trained" professional in infection prevention and control specific to the clinical environment of care.

EXCHANGE 2016 will be held on September 25-28, at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA. This year, EXCHANGE attendees can look forward to:
• Preconference Workshop
• CHEST Preconference Workshop
• CMIP Preconference Workshop
• Micro Sessions
• Extended Sessions
• Healthcare Marketplace

AHE has started this initiative to encourage professionals in the field to begin, or continue to refer to the departments and the personnel caring for the healthcare environment as environmental services professionals rather than as housekeepers, janitors and custodians. The staff and management teams responsible for maintaining the clinical environment of care require different skills and competencies from those needed in the commercial cleaning and general maintenance industry and it's time we address this critical distinction.

Please join AHE in ongoing efforts.

Sponsored by Kimberly-Clark Professional
Developed by the Association for the Healthcare Environment and Kimberly-Clark Professional, the Heart of Healthcare Award recognizes and honors outstanding frontline environmental services technicians making a contribution to support safety initiatives and reduction and prevention of Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs).

The program purpose is to elevate the critical role that frontline environmental services technicians play in the care of patients and the healthcare environment. Step up for someone you know is doing an outstanding job in environmental services by nominating him or her today!

Interviews with Gary L. Dolan, Pam Toppel, J. Hudson Garrett, Jr., Lea Beach, Lisa Ford, Doug Rothermel, and Brad M. Winnie

Creating a Career Portfolio; Empowering Employees