Healthcare Facilities Today
Fabrics and flooring treated with antimicrobial agents that prevent bacterial growth create more problems than they solve, according to an article on the FacilityCare website.

Healthcare Facilities Today
Clinical waste was dumped in with dirty linen 40 times and sent off to the laundry at Kent hospitals, according to an article on the Kent Online website.

Alison Bryant, Greenhealth
HPRC and Practice Greenhealth present key results from a survey on plastic packaging and products recycling in U.S. hospitals

Heather Punke, Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality
The following is a list of hospitals for which 89 percent or more of patients reported that their room and bathroom were "always" clean on their HCAHPS Survey.

Shannon Barnet, Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Patient and family engagement as a strategy has become an integral part of many hospitals' and health systems' improvement efforts for quality, safety, and patient outcomes, according to a recent AHA report.

Kelly M. Pyrek, Infection Control Today
Teamwork and a multi-modal approach to infection prevention and control were the driving forces behind positive change and improved patient outcomes at several institutions that were honored in late 2014 by the Fine Foundation and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF).

Alex Smith, KCUR.org
After St. John's Medical Center in Joplin was seriously damaged in 2011 by one the biggest tornadoes on record, its parent company erected a new hospital, renamed Mercy Hospital Joplin, that's designed to withstand 250-mile-per-hour winds.

Katherine West, RN, BSN, MSEd, Journal of Emergency Medical Services
Management and disposal regulations have been issued by states throughout the country, many of which contain very detailed and cumbersome requirements for health care providers.

Healthcare Facilities Today
Designers are now exploring more automated ways to combat bacteria through isolation units, technology applications, infection-reducing materials, and greening spaces, according to an article on the Sourceable website.

Shannon Barnet, Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Using continuous ultraviolet-C disinfection robots was proven to be more effective in killing pathogens than pulsed xenon devices in a recent study, funded by the U.S. Veterans Administration.

Cheryl Clark, HealthLeaders Media
Nearly 8 percent of infected patients who were readmitted to the hospital were diagnosed with recurrent C. Diff, indicating that they had been reinfected in a post-discharge setting or were not entirely cured prior to discharge, study data shows.

Jason Tetro, Popular Science
Infection prevention and control is tough. Figuring out how to ensure a patient remains free of undue pathogen entry and harm is not easy, particularly when invasive procedures are involved.

University of California, San Diego via Infection Control Today
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an antibiotic-resistant superbug, can cause life-threatening skin, bloodstream and surgical site infections, or pneumonia. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine now report that cigarette smoke may make matters worse.

Jamelle Sanders, Huffington Post
As someone that has the pleasure of developing and training leaders around the world, I have been noticing a disheartening trend for a number of years now.

Cindy Wahler, Forbes
There is a fundamental question all organizations should be asking which is, "How can we stay in business forever?"

Peter Bregman, Forbes
At 8:20 a.m., my 12-year-old daughter, Isabelle, was rushing to meet her ski group. She was 20 minutes late and stressed – she takes her skiing very seriously and was training for a race in a couple of days.

Rachel Bridge, The Telegraph
When you are growing a business, one of the hardest things to learn is how to manage your employees. A happy, motivated workforce is a vital component in the success of your business, yet it can be hard to know how to do it right, particularly if you are doing it for the first time.

Thursday, April 30
This webinar walks environmental services leaders through the maze of identifying, selecting and applying effective staffing standards for your facility.

Thursday, May 14
Panelists will discuss a plug and play strategy and toolkit to use during outbreaks.

Take part in one of AHE's Train the Trainer workshops and return to your facility prepared to train your environmental services staff to become Certified Healthcare Environmental Service Technicians, CHEST... and start making significant contributions to the patient experience of care, the facility, the profession, and the community!

The AHE Innovation Award presents a tremendous opportunity for companies and organizations to be recognized for innovative and improved products, processes, and technology advancements. The award is open to AHE members and non-members and requires a nominal application fee of $300 at the time of application. Apply now!

MyAHE is our branded members-only discussion forum. We recently migrated the discussions from iCohere to Learner Community, a new, interactive and exciting learning platform. On MyAHE, you can ask your most pressing environmental services related questions or answer questions posed by other professionals.

Frank Newport, Gallup
Americans' views about the Affordable Care Act are more positive now than they were last fall, although overall attitudes remain more negative than positive.

Ann Doss Helms, The Charlotte Observer via Miami Herald
Tallying people who didn’t die is tricky business, so people asked questions when President Obama proclaimed, at the fifth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, that his signature bill had prevented 50,000 deaths.

Austin Kirkland, Healthcare Finance
A health care revolution is underway and a fundamental change in health care delivery and payment models is taking place.