The late-arriving life safety surveyor (or the continuing saga of surveyus interruptus)
There's a story coming out soon in the next issue of our Healthcare Life Safety Compliance newsletter about how on occasion, The Joint Commission's life safety specialists are arriving at different times than the regular survey team.
Just to confirm this, I had a client recently surveyed who was informed that the life safety surveyor would be on site "sometime in the next two to three weeks" (I'm quoting the client, not necessarily the survey team).
One of the fascinating dynamics is that when the regular survey team members left, they only provided a verbal report of their findings--nothing in writing until the life safety tour is completed.
It's my understanding that The Joint Commission is hoping to get things on track by sometime this summer (or as we say here in the Boston area, "summah"). However, those folks in the mix until then are likely going to have some anxious moments (not at all like waiting for the next installment of your favorite blog entries, but I digress) as they try to identify post-survey strategies.
On the consultative advice front, I guess my best thought would be not to take any concrete post-survey steps until you have the full survey report in hand. The absolute key to post-survey response is to base either your clarification or evidence of standards compliance on the exact verbiage in the survey findings.
And, please, please, please (I'm channeling James Brown again--do it on the one, heh!) don't fix something that isn't broken. You know what compliance looks like in your house, so embrace the courage of your convictions and you'll be doing the right thing--once the life safety surveyor comes and goes.
Talk about building suspense.
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