Cultural Competence is essential for both the Health Professional and their staff. So what does it mean to be culturally competent?
Book a Strategy Call to discuss how you can be culturally competent
Failure to conduct a hazard & risk assessment kills a patient
Health service charged after patient death
Melbourne Health has been charged by WorkSafe following the death of a patient at its Broadmeadows aged persons mental health unit.
WorkSafe lodged three charges against Melbourne Health under section 23(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (the OHS Act) at the Broadmeadows Magistrates Court on 7 June relating to the death on 23 September, 2013.
WorkSafe alleges that Melbourne Health contravened the OHS Act on three occasions when it failed to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, that the 75-year-old male patient was not exposed to risks to his health or safety arising from the conduct of its undertaking.
Every practices MUST conduct a Hazard & Risk Assessment. We have online courses that your team can work through together.
Cybercriminals could HACK hospital medical equipment…
“Cybercriminals could HACK hospital medical equipment to stop patients’ treatment or make them overdose, IT experts warn.”[1]
In 2017 a hospital in the UK was shut down by cyber criminals who demanded a ransom to release data in each hospital staff members account.
Nearly 20,000 appointments were cancelled after the health service failed to provide basic security against cyber attackers. The virus, which spread via email, locked staff out of their computers and demanded £230 ($289) to release the files on each employee account.
Five Accident and Emergency departments even had to divert ambulances away at the peak of the crisis.
Since this attack took place, the healthcare industry is still vulnerable to attacks due to insufficient defence in depth tactics to thwart cyber-attacks.
“Hacking across any industry can occur for financial gain, to gather information, as a form of protest or just ‘for the fun of it,” says Professor Alan Woodward, a computer security expert at the University of Surrey.
‘Chief Information Security Officers report cyber-attacks are on the rise in healthcare.’
According to a new study by Carbon Black, two-thirds of surveyed healthcare organisations said cyberattacks have become more sophisticated over the past year.
Nearly half (45 per cent) of surveyed healthcare organisations said they had encountered attacks over the past year where the primary motivation was the destruction of data.[2]
Destructive attacks, tailored to specific targets, cause system outages and destroy data in ways designed to paralyse an organisation’s operations and are often carried out by malicious nation-states.
Simple Steps
Installing good security software specifically designed to combat ransomware attacks mentioned above would help mitigate many of these types of attacks.
Ensuring computer operating systems and software are UpToDate with the latest patches can also help. If your system is using software that is no longer supported, then it’s time to upgrade.
Information Technology staff need the training to complement their skills to ensure they stay UpToDate with the latest types of attacks and how to defend against them. Empowering your team to protect the networks efficiently will help mitigate the risk that medical systems face.
More tips to come soon.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7149385/Cybercriminals-hack-medical-devices-used-NHS-hospitals.html
[2] https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/cisos-report-cyberattacks-rise-healthcare
The To-Do List Mental Stress
As medical practitioners your day is one big to-do list just getting through the patient list for the day. However, putting a compliance framework around your business and growing your practice may seem like a huge mountain to climb.
It might surprise you that your to-do list or your task list, can mentally bring you undone. If you’re a very organised person, you probably have lists. Lots of people have lists, but where you can come unstuck is if you have a really huge list with lots of tasks to do. You look at this huge list every day and think to yourself ‘Where am I going to begin? Where do I start?’ and at the end of the day you’ll find you’ve only put the slightest dent in it. You may have only crossed off three things and how deflating is that? It then becomes hard to stay focused, motivated and to gain clarity around what you need to do.
Here’s a tip from our Subject Matter Expert in Time Management shares to create a focused, motivated and productive mindset. It is suggested by experts that if you do have a huge list, your goal is to pick just three tasks (or no more than five) and simply focus on those three tasks that you most want to achieve for the day. For example, what are the top ‘must do’ three tasks you ‘have to’ get done before the end of the day?
What happens is that when you complete those three tasks, there’s a great sense of accomplishment and that’s what enables you to feel productive. It motivates you, stimulates you and propels you to keep going and moving forward. Celebrating and accumulating small wins, makes the big wins much more achievable and enjoyable.
Just like the proverb says “How do you eat an elephant? Just one mouthful at a time”. A famous Lao Tzu quote says, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”. It’s about taking that first movement forward, that small step which is achievable. Coming back to your to-do list, make sure that it’s achievable, that it’s a mountain that’s scalable, in fact it’s a hill not a mountain. Pick three tasks that you will achieve today, and you may even get them completed by lunchtime.
Also what three tasks can you delegate to others?
If you are struggling with Time Management… make one of your tasks today to schedule a meeting with our Time Management Subject Matter Expert.
Important Info you MUST know
3.0% increase to base pay rates from 1st July 2019
The Fair Work Commission has announced a 3.0% increase to minimum wages following its 2019 Annual Wage Review.
The new national minimum wage will be $740.80 per week or $19.49 per hour. The increase applies to base pay rates from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July 2019. The change only applies to employees that get their pay rates from the national minimum wage, a modern award or in some cases a registered agreement. Most employees are covered by an award.
Casuals converting to permanent status
It is also a good time of the year to review if some of your casuals can be placed on permanent part-time or permanent full-time status. Fair Work Australia gives workers under 85 modern awards the right to request full or part time employment status after 12 months.
“If the casual employment turns out to be long-term in nature, and to be of sufficient regularity… then we consider it to be fair and necessary for the employee to have access to a mechanism by which the casual employment may be converted to an appropriate form of permanent employment” the full bench found.
Employment Law Breaches
Ignorantly underpaying employees can be both costly and embarrassing to your business. A Western Australian & Sydney based company found to have underpaid almost 99% of its staff had to send apology letters to every affected worker, as well as place a public notice in the Australian Financial Review to acknowledge and apologise for its employment law breaches. Workers were under paid $447,717. The underpayments resulted from failures to pay correct overtime and shift-work penalties, as well as part-time and broken-shift allowances.
Penalties
If you short-change an employee their leave entitlements in any way, you can face prosecution from the Fair Work Ombudsman or other state jurisdictions, depending on the type of leave involved and the state you operate in (even if your mistake was unintentional). Operating your business, could you afford to pay penalties up to $63,000? Penalties are not tax deductible and therefore the money has to come from somewhere?
Can you rely on your staff to have inputted the correct payroll award rates or calculated the correct entitlements? Our experienced Subject Matter Experts can ensure your payroll compliance as they have both knowledge and years of experience on establishing the correct awards.
Single Touch Payroll
Single Touch Payroll (STP) is a new way of reporting tax and super information to the ATO.
If you are using a solution that offers STP reporting, such as payroll or accounting software, you will send your employees’ tax and super information to us each time you run your payroll and pay your employees.
The information is sent to us either directly from your software, or through a third party – such as a sending service provider.
Most Medical Practices are not fire compliant!
Different industries often put out policies, procedures and handbooks for their industry, but what if what has been produced is not enough?
A recent google survey of medical practices and their practice procedures and policies revealed a disturbing trend. Most of the practices are using the same template!
What is the issue with this?
First question is, has each practice done a hazard and risk assessment of their site? If they had they would realise that they must adhere to all the legislation that is relevant to their business not just follow the guidelines put out by Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). One area that has not been addressed effectively is fire safety.
Most practices tend to rely on the guidelines put out by RCGP and it talks about having fire safety in place but does not fulfil the requirements of the Building Fire Services Act 2008 or AS3745 Managing Emergencies in Facilities.
In the past nine years I have audited about a dozen medical practices and on first audit none of them were fire compliant, though they maintained their belief they were fire compliant as they had followed the RCGP guidelines.
Medical practitioners need to understand that they MUST as a minimum, by law do the following:
- Conduct and document a Hazard & Risk Assessment of their practice
- Install Evacuation Signs and Diagrams
- Have a separate Emergency Evacuation Response Plan (separate to their other procedures)
- Have ALL staff, including doctors complete, General Evacuation Training every year
- Have ALL staff, including doctors complete First Response Training every two years
- Have the wardens (usually practices managers or nurses) do training every year if in QLD and in the other states every six months.
- Conduct a Practice Fire Drill for all shifts on an annual basis
The costliest exercise for most practices is the loss of income that they receive when they take doctors out of circulation for these training courses, so most practices fail to have ALL staff trained. One way to alleviate the expense of this training on practices is to have customised online training for each practice. This means that doctors can do the training at a time that suits them. Proper training is more than just telling someone, “there is the door, get out”!
General Evacuation training, for medical practices should include training on what to do if they get an aggressive person or someone with a gun trying to rob them of drugs. Other unique issues for doctors is, what if they are conducting internal examination on patients who are undressed, and an immediate evacuation is required of all people from premises. Are they prepared to deal with people who insist on getting dressed and putting their shoes on?
To determine if your business is fire compliant you need to conduct a Fire Safety Audit, work with us and we teach you how to do an audit and what to look for. You will receive a documented audit report that cites the legislation that you may be breaching, and the cost of the penalties for non-compliance. Call today to book a Virtual Fire Safety Audit and ask us how you can get one for free!
