Doug Dulin, Health Facilities Management
Lean design principles are helping to take waste out of health care operations and optimize workflows.

Jamie Morgan, Health Facilities Management
Health & Human Services' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) encourages hospitals to participate in recently opened discussions on its Technical Resources, Assistance Center, and Information Exchange (TRACIE) about updating the Hospital Preparedness Program's health care preparedness capabilities and performance measures.

Mark Searcy, Facility Care
The greening of commercial cleaning has advanced beyond a marketing pitch to become a call to action in the janitorial services industry.

Beatrix Babcock, FacilityCare
It was first discovered in 1847 that hand-washing could help stop the spread of infection, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that hospitals began monitoring and developing their own infection control programs, which facilities are required to have in place today.

McKnight's Long-Term Care News
New online resources may help prevent health care workplace violence, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has said.

Bob Kehoe, Health Facilities Management
Patient safety efforts widen to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Infection Control Today
Clostridium difficile (C. diff), one of the most common health-care-associated infections (HAIs), increases hospital costs by 40 percent per case and puts those infected at high risk for longer hospital stays and readmissions, according to a new study.

Linda R. Greene, RN, MPS, CIC, Infection Control Today
The last decade has brought unprecedented changes in health care delivery. Although there has been continued development of new devices, drugs, and techniques, the major change for those in infection prevention and epidemiology is to identify, manage, and use clinical data to provide important information leading to early recognition of disease including prevalence and risk factors for infections, in and across multiple health care settings.

Max Green, Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Building on recent efforts to steer its facilities, builders, and architects away from utilizing finishes and fabrics containing antimicrobial chemicals, Oakland, Calif-based Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest integrated health care provider, has banned all paint and other interior building products treated with antimicrobials from all of its hospitals.

Heather Punke, Becker’s Infection Control & Clinical Quality
While the number of high-isolation beds in the U.S. has grown exponentially since the 2014 Ebola outbreak, other challenges to responding to such an outbreak remain, according to a study in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard Business Review
For all the hard work to improve coordination and collaboration in health care, most hospitals are still organized into silos based on clinical specialties – and communication among them is uneven at best.

Joe Robinson, Entrepreneur
The light bulb went on for Jeff Greenfield, co-founder and COO of media analytics firm C3 Metrics, on a rare vacation. It was the first one he had taken unplugged, without his phone or computer; his major activity while in Camden, Maine, turned out to be sleeping. One day he conked out at 5 p.m.

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

January 11 – February 21
This preparatory course is designed for professionals preparing for the comprehensive and challenging CHESP Certification Exam.

Cost: AHE Members: FREE; Non-Members: $179.00

It’s no accident that AHE is celebrating the 30th conference anniversary in Pittsburgh – a city known for its bridges and steel is the perfect place to forge pathways for the future and make connections that will last. Visit the new EXCHANGE 2016 website today to learn more.

If interested in contributing to EXPLORE by authoring a best-practices article, email Heather Williams, EXPLORE editor, for more information. The magazine covers all aspects relevant to health care environmental services professionals.

Gabriel Boardman, EXPLORE magazine
As we observe the latest trends in health care, two of those trends are glaringly prevalent: our growing concern over infection and cross contamination, as well as our renewed interest in the greening of our industry. And these two trends are the fruits of an over-encompassing trend: The greying demographics.

How environmental services, infection prevention, and health care laundry can enhance linen stewardship and awareness.
Chad Basham, MBA, CHESP, Nellie League, MSN, RN, NE-BC, and Lynn Moreau, BSN, RN, EXPLORE magazine