AS I SEE IT
10 deficiencies that surveyors cite most frequently in ASCs. It is advisable to give the surveyor all of the information that is required to do the survey successfully and not to evade any issues that arise. Here are two reasons why. First, when the sur- veyor walks into your facility, unan- nounced, to perform a life safety code (or health) survey, having this informa- tion available will allow you to walk through your facility to reassure anyone on your staff who is anxious about the inspection. Second, if you can hand this information to a surveyor immediately, he or she will not have time to become idle and begin to look more closely into everything in your facility, including the flame-retardant characteristics of a fabric after laundering, the laundry
It is advisable to give the surveyor all of the information that is required to do the survey successfully and not to evade any issues that arise.”
—Tom Scheidel, Scheidel & Associates
contract, the protective characteristics of a new carpet, your ASC’s infection prevention practices and that extra fire extinguisher sitting in the maintenance room that somehow got off of the pre- ventive maintenance checklist. While providing all of the informa- tion that a surveyor needs is a good idea, providing the surveyor with more infor- mation than required is not. Avoid pro- viding a file cabinet of over-information as it will cause surveyors to stop, focus
intently and methodically move through each system, subsystem and available testing protocol. In general, the survey- or will move from a sampling method- ology to a more “total approach.”
Tom Scheidel is a retired CMS surveyor and educator. He is a former administrator of a hospital, clinics and a county agency. He is the chief executive officer of Scheidel & Associates,
www.CMS911.com, and can be reached at
cmscompliance@yahoo.com.
ASC FOCUS MARCH 2013
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