Matt Poe, American Laundry News
Benefits include cost savings, environmental, health and safety and more, according to expert.

CleanLink
To the dismay of facility managers, heavy rains and strong storms during summer months can lead to flooding and water damage within facilities.

Paige Minemyer, Fierce Healthcare
Hospitals have made significant progress in improving patient safety, but they still have to tackle many challenges to continue making gains, an article in JAMA Viewpoints argues.

Medical Construction & Design
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently announced a final rule to update healthcare facilities’ fire protection guidelines to improve protections for all Medicare beneficiaries in facilities from fire.

Infection Control Today
When healthcare providers know they are being watched, they are twice as likely to comply with hand hygiene guidelines.

Heather Punke, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
On Monday, CMS released a proposed rule change to its Conditions of Participation which would, among other changes, require hospitals to implement antibiotic stewardship programs in order to participate in Medicare and Medicaid.

Infection Control Today
A workplace outcome study published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) found that offices equipped with alcohol-based hand sanitizers and hand sanitizing wipes throughout the building and at employees' desks resulted in 24.3 percent fewer healthcare claims for hand hygiene preventable illnesses -- such as cold, flu and respiratory illnesses -- than the office and employees in the control group without these products.

Katrina Lamansky, WQAD.com
Many health-care workers do not wash their hands nearly as often as they should, but one Detroit hospital may have found a way to improve hand hygiene.

Max Green, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Although fully autonomous humanoid robots are not yet answering our every beck and call, some are proving themselves to be efficient partners in hospital room disinfection, according to new research in the American Journal of Infection Control.

Sonja Carberry, Investor's Business Daily
Your first days in the chief's chair are crucial.

Stan Linhorst, Syracuse.com
Pete Moore has worked with special needs students for 34 years in the North Syracuse School District.

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.

To acknowledge the ongoing and outstanding sustainability efforts of healthcare facilities - and environmental service departments in particular - the AHE presents the Environmental Sustainability Certificate Program. This program not only provides guidance on efficient, effective and value-added environmentally sustainable healthcare operations, but also provides it in such a way that is achievable within all budgets. It is part of the AHE’s overall sustainability initiative, which includes ongoing development of sustainability programs, publications and educational opportunities.

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.

The AHE Innovation Award has been developed and designed to recognize and increase awareness of Products, Processes, and Technology Advancements that empower individuals to improve measured outcomes in caring for the healthcare environment. AHE recognizes the importance of being inclusive in its efforts to recognize the "best and brightest" as we look to challenge the existing expectations of performance, behavior, engineering, and quality outcomes through innovation.

Innovations must be commercially available or otherwise already in the public domain as this award is intended to increase awareness of available solutions.

This application requires a nominal application fee of $300 at the time of application.

Applications Due June 17, 2016.

By Sheryl S. Jackson

By Sheryl S. Jackson