CleanLink
AHE is excited to announce the nominees of its Innovation Award which celebrates innovation in environmental services, infection prevention and safety, and recognizes the new solutions that are responding to - and helping to advance - the strategic goals of providers and operators in the field.

Matt Poe, American Laundry News
Experts say standards, practices and programs will become more stringent, better.

Laurie A. Gilmer, facilitiesnet.com
Business resilience describes the ability to rapidly adapt and respond to business disruptions while maintaining continuity of operations.

Mickey Crowe, CleanLink
The custodial cart can be an effective tool in cleaning or it can be a disaster.

Kristen Hampton, KLTV
Carolina’s Medical Center in Charlotte has invested millions of dollars to provide patients with the best medical care available. This story is about the other side of their care team that uses a different kind of medicine.

Brian Zimmerman, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
As local transmission in Florida continues and with more than more than 2,000 cases reported across the nation as of Aug. 17, healthcare providers — particularly those in at-risk regions — should prepare for treating Zika-infected patients.

Einav Keet, Contagion Live
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), norovirus causes about 20 million cases of acute gastroenteritis each year in the United States, along with more than 400,000 emergency room visits and 570 to 800 deaths.

Chris Dall, CIDRAP
US researchers say they've identified a strain of Escherichia coli that is resistant to both colistin and carbapenem antibiotics in a US hospital patient.

Laurie Larson, Health Facilities Management
As a quality improvement leader through its Hospital Engagement Network, created by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ national Partnership for Patients and its Leading Edge Advanced Practice Topics initiative, the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) continues to uphold a 100-year commitment to care quality.

Zack Burgess and Paul Vachon, Crain's Detroit Business
Developing the next wave of leaders to move a company forward is something that needs constant effort.

Pollyanna Pixton, Forbes
People have been trying to improve leadership a bit at a time. What if we followed the model of the Tesla designers who didn’t want to just tweak a car already designed but start over?

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

We need YOU! 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.

The AHE Seal of Review and Recognition Program is designed to be a comprehensive review and formalized recognition process aimed at assisting healthcare professionals in selecting training and in-service programs that promote quality, safety and the most favorable outcomes for the healthcare environment and its related disciplines.

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:
• Certified Healthcare Environmental Services Technician (CHEST) Pre-Conference Workshop
• Certificate of Mastery in Infection Prevention for Environmental Services (CMIP) Pre-Conference Workshop
• Infection Prevention, Environmental Cleaning, Leadership, Sustainability, Outbreaks and other 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 help us redefine healthcare environmental services!

Celebrate your team during Environmental Services Week, September 11-17, 2016.

By Sheryl S. Jackson

By Pattie Costello