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!

The AHE awards and recognition program acknowledges and elevates professionals who have demonstrated the highest level of excellence and leadership. Award recipients are those who work towards advocating and educating themselves on best practices and standards, developing new leaders within a hospital or healthcare facility, and promoting the environmental services profession.

Applications are due June 9, 2017.

Todd Lappi, Healthcare Facilities Today
leanliness is an important factor when indicating the quality of a hospital – and an area that patients are asked to rate and evaluate.

Jamie Morgan, Health Facilities Management
Sentara Healthcare is in the midst of a systemwide rollout of copper-infused linens, patient gowns and hard surfaces for all inpatient rooms at its 12 hospitals.

Matt Poe, American Laundry News
Linen replacement is a top recurring operational cost for the healthcare and hospitality industries.

Seth Weller, American Laundry News
When does it make sense for a laundry to move from processing done by hand to automated equipment, whether partially or fully automated?

Megan J. DiGiorgio, MSN, RN, CIC, FAPIC, McKnight's Long Term Care News
While flu season may have peaked, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 36 states continue to report widespread flu activity. Significant flu activity is expected to continue for several more weeks, and the amount of people seeing their healthcare provider for influenza-like illness has been at or above the national baseline for 10 consecutive weeks so far this season.

Peter Teska and Jim Gauthier, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Floors must be addressed in a robust infection prevention program so that they are properly cleaned, sanitized and maintained to prevent the transition of dangerous germs.

Heather Punke, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Increasingly, healthcare facilities have opted for foam over liquid soap, but that move could put patients and healthcare workers at increased risk of infection, a small study published in the American Journal of Infection Control found.

Brian P. Dunleavy, Contagion Live
Preliminary data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) "National Scorecard on Rates of Hospital-Acquired Conditions" suggests that these problems may be on the way to becoming a thing of the past—or, at least, that much progress has been made in reducing the incidence of HAIs and other facility-linked health problems in US hospitals.

Susanne Biro, Forbes
Lately, I have been thinking about what makes a leader in today’s world.

Sherrie Campbell, Entrepreneur
To be an exceptional leader we must be able to place ourselves in the shoes of another, and feel what they are feeling.

By Carl Solomon Sr., MBA, FAHE, CHESP

By Carrie Schuster

Make yourself indispensable and advance your career! Plan your education for 2017. Visit AHE’s brand-new 2017 ENGAGE site to learn more about educational courses, podcasts, webinars, and events. And make sure to check out AHE's new EXPRESS Learning Courses. EXPRESS is a mobile learning platform that offers educational podcasts delivered by environmental services and infection prevention thought leaders. You asked for learning opportunities that require less of a time commitment and we delivered!

CMIP, the Certificate of Mastery in Infection Prevention for Environmental Services Professionals (CMIP) is a robust certificate program which requires online pre-work and an in-person training session, along with an optional post-session capstone project/assessment. This intensive 30-hour certificate program provides Environmental Services 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.