Fire Extinguishers in Operating Rooms

...was recently surveyed by the Joint Commission. It was recommended, by the survey team, that we add CO2 fire extinguishers in the OR rooms. It was explained to us that CO2 extinguishers were safe to use in the OR rooms during surgery. Is this is a code requirement or just a recommendation? Also, what do the other facilities use in the OR suites and rooms?

Main and branch electrical circuit breaker testing

Would you be so kind as to forward this question to our membership.
1) Does anyone have an annual or any routine program for Main andBranch electrical breaker testing.
2) If yes how often and down to what breaker size do you test.
3) Does anyone have a program that includes anything more then visualor thermal imaging inspections.
Reason for asking, I recently read where a hospital was cited underImmediate Threat to Life and automatic Preliminary Denial ofAccreditation; for not testing it's main breakers. This is not somethingwe have done in the past and will be implementing starting this year.

FTE calculations for budgeting purposes

Do any of the Hospital’s in Maine use gross square footage of their facilities to benchmark their FTE (full-time employee) calculations for budgeting purposes? York Hospital has historically utilized adjusted patient days for all FTE budgetary staffing calculations (clinical and non-clinical) which is not very effective for Environmental Services staff (Engineering, Maintenance, Housekeeping, Biomed and Security), particularly given the growth of our facility in recent years. If any facility managers are using an alternate means to benchmark or assess appropriate staffing levels, I’d be interested in talking with them about their organization’s methodology.

Work Management Software

What do you use for work management software and would you recommend it?

Generator Redundancy

Re: Generator Survey

I am trying to ascertain the range of generator coverage you all have? Until we added a new ED, we have been fortunate enough to be able to:

Power 100% of the hospital with generator power (fairly nusual I suspect?)

We have 2 - 750KVA generators, 1- can carry the load with a medium A/C load, therefore we essentially have redundancy, should one of them fail for any reason. With a heavy A/C load, we'd have to shed 1 or more transfer switches depending on the load.

When we added 36,000 sf for the new ED and education/admin addition, the wisdom of the engineers was to put this addition on a new, single, separate 550KVA generator, w/o a transfer switch back to our 2 original generators, therefore, should it fail, the ED has only Life Safety (lighting only), (we fed life safety back to to the original generators, just in case of
failure.)

Here's my issue: I suspect we are all over the board on generator coverage ability, as well as redundancy? Therefore I need to know if my belt and suspenders concern is shared among you in your own shops. This new ED generator has failed to start 2x in test since February, therefore, I want to install a transfer switch to be able to power the ED, should the new ED generator fail (+/- $75,000 job). Can you answer the following questions, while identifying your hopsital for me?

1. What %, or level of coverage can your generator/s provide?

2. Do you have more than 1 generator?

3. If you have more than 1, can it pick up the load should the primary fail (how much redundancy capacity)?

4. Hospital Name:

Other comments are appreciated.!

Petroleum based lubricants on patients using oxygen

Here’s a little piece of information I requested from Greg Day in response to a question I got from my Respiratory Department. The question was,” What reg do I show nursing to get them to stop using ?”. I just thought someone else might be able to use this someday.

Extension-cords and receptacles in surgical suites

As I read the NEC, extension cord sets: "..shall be permitted during the period of construction, remodeling, maintenance, repair, or demolition..." "...not to exceed 90 days for holiday decorative lighting and similar purpose." " during emergencies and for tests, experiments and for developmental work." and "... shall not be used as a substitiute for the fixed wiring of a structure.." (NEC 70-590.3 & 400.8). There also needs to be a "..written assured equipmpent grounding conductor program continuously enforced...to ensure that equipment grounding conductors for all cord sets....are installed and maintained.." (NEC 70-590.6)

So given all that (and any other requirement I may not have stated), just what is acceptable and SOP for the needs in the surgical suites? These suites are large with receptacles on the walls plus an overhead reel at the head end of the table for anesthesia. Seve