Jamie Morgan, Health Facilities Management
Has your health care organization adopted initiatives to improve indoor air quality?

Paul Oswald, Healthcare Facilities Today
Sounds absurd right? Well, allow me to explain. Quite honestly, it is what you do with the information obtained by running analytics that pays real dividends.

Eric Frederick, American Laundry News
Veteran laundry manager shares several key ‘rules’ for purchasing.

Mark Williams, Healthcare Facilities Today
There are places where the power simply cannot fail.

Tamara Rosin, Becker's Hospital Review
When the CIO of a large health system said during a healthcare conference he didn't care that patients complained of certain banalities on Twitter, such as hospital food or parking at the health system's facilities, he elicited surprise, confusion and disappointment among listeners.

J. Hudson Garrett Jr., PhD, MSN, IP-BC, Health Facilities Management
Each year, health care-associated infections (HAIs) are a documented source of increased mortality and morbidity, significant costs for care delivery, and have a negative impact on the patient experience.

Infection Control Today
It's thought that antibiotic resistance is associated with a fitness cost, meaning that bacteria that develop antibiotic resistance must sacrifice something in order to do so.

Infection Control Today
In February, a new industry consortium, EHCO™ -- the Electronic Hand-hygiene Compliance Organization – was formed by eight U.S.-based hand-hygiene compliance solution providers. This month, we further exploring the status of the hand hygiene market and the obstacles to bringing this sector up to the electronic status of the rest of healthcare.

Natalie Vestin, MPH, CIDRAP
Hospital antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) may lower use of the drugs by almost 20%—nearly 40% in the intensive care unit (ICU)—and they were tied to a slight drop in infection rates, according to a meta-analysis last week in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

Shannon Barnet, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
The fact that environmental hygiene helps reduce the transmission of healthcare-associated infections in the operating room is well-established, but that doesn't mean every hospital's OR staff knows how to go about improving their environmental hygiene practices.

Lena J. Weiner, HealthLeaders Media
There's been much discussion about leadership lessons healthcare can take from other industries, including both hospitality and entertainment, but one field that is often revisited is the military—and for good reason.

Debora J. McLaughlin, New York Daily News
Muhammad Ali stood tall and strong, despite his diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.

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 our ongoing efforts.

Sponsored by SCA
The award recognizes and celebrates best practices in cleaning and caring for the environment. It was designed to highlight the outstanding achievements of a leading-edge environmental services team in maintaining high levels of performance in cleaning, disinfecting, infection prevention, environmental sustainability and stewardship, use of technology, patient satisfaction, education, and training in critical areas.
Applications Due June 17, 2016.

Joe Tye, EXPLORE magazine

Brenda Marks, BN, MBA, Explore magazine