This year the New England Healthcare Engineers’ Society (NEHES) hosted their first-ever virtual Annual Fall Conference from September 1 – 3, 2020. There were over 250 facility mangers, business partners and esteemed speakers through the event. On the final day of the conference, Chris Lynch and Carl Nelson of Code Red Consultants hosted a Breakout Session with Rich Rybski and Kirsten Waltz of Baystate Health. The session was titled “How Complete is your Life Safety Program” and had over 50 attendees.
Healthcare facilities are faced with a daunting challenge of maintaining life safety compliance in a dynamic environment in accordance with numerous regulations enforced by multiple authorities. Most organizations look to achieve compliance through a group effort that requires coordination between multiple departments. Individuals in responsible charge of portions of life safety compliance are often wearing multiple hats and are not solely focused on monitoring their piece of the life safety program on a daily basis. Most facilities go in to “high alert” mode when they expect a survey and try to get their house in order at the 11th hour. Quite often there are holes identified and rather than focusing on maintaining compliance, resources are allocated to repairing or potentially even hiding issues.
The presentation was a case study of the life safety program developed which has helped Baystate Health evolve from a reactive to proactive compliance approach over the course of a decade. Real examples of major contributing factors including planning and construction projects, barrier management, life safety drawings, ITM, and policies and procedures will be discussed in a framework for attendees to take with them back to their organizations.
For more information on our approach to healthcare life safety compliance please email info@crcfire.com