June 2004 Newsletter

Letter from the president
Advisories and Alerts
Email from Dale Woodin

Letter from the President

MSHFM Members,

It has been awhile since our last communication and I am working very diligently to provide the time required to keep our membership up to date with current industry issues. The following alerts and advisories will be of great interest to most of you with older building systems.

The good news is that the FCC has extended the bandwidth freeze on medical telemetry equipment as stated in the email form Dale Woodin. The bad news is that it is inevitable that older medical telemetry equipment transmitters will need to be replaced.

You will also notice in this alert that the Joint Commission will be surveying on USP 797 regarding Pharmaceutical Compounding – Sterile Preparations, which will affect clean rooms within the Hospital pharmacy setting. While investigating the new USP 797 requirements and doing a cross walk over to the Code of State Regulations from the DOH, I found some discrepancies and you will need to look at the Division 220 – State Board of Pharmacy, Chapter 2 general rules. While JCAHO will be surveying to the new USP the Division 220 requirements are much more stringent. Take a close look into the ISO Classes requirements in both of these documents.

I am working on the educational program for the next meeting that will most likely be held in late June or early July. Information will be mailed to the membership when plans have been finalized. If any of you have an educational event or opportunity that should be on our calendar please email me at; doug.ruble@hrhonline.orgor give me a call at
573-248-5390.

Sincerely,
Doug Ruble, CPE, CPMM, RHSO
MSHFM President

Advisories and Alerts

FCC Expect to Take Some Action Soon to Extend Bandwidth Freeze
The AHA and American Society for Healthcare Engineering met today with the Federal Communications Commission to further discuss the consensus plan developed with the Land Mobile Communications Council for an orderly transition of wireless medical telemetry equipment from the 460-470 MHz Private Land Mobile Radio Service band to the frequencies established at 608-614 MHz and 1.4 GHz for the Wireless Medical Telemetry Service. The FCC indicated it was favorably disposed to extending the freeze on additional high-powered users in the PLMRS and expects to take some action to extend the freeze by June 6, when the current freeze is scheduled to expire. "Stay tuned for further developments," said Mary Beth Savary Taylor, AHA vice president for executive branch relations.

EMAIL FROM DALE WOODIN:

Hi folks,

We met with the FCC yesterday afternoon regarding extending the freeze on 460-470 and accepting AHA/ASHE plan for temporary registration. Based on the meeting we anticipate FCC will extend the freeze (see item one below which appeared in AHA News late yesterday afternoon) and will accept the AHA/ASHE plan to register hospitals continuing to operate equipment in the 460-470MHz band. Once this is formally accepted by the FCC I will get back to you with next steps.

Thanks, Dale

Dale Woodin
Deputy Executive Director
American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE)
312-422-3812
dwoodin@aha.org

JCAHO issues Clarification on Surveying of USP 797
The June 2004 Joint Commission Perspectives provides a clarification to the expectations outlined in the April 2004 Perspectives establishing July 1, 2004 as the implementation date of surveys for USP 797 requirements. The June Perspectives states that, "The Joint Commission will expect compliance with all its standards where the current requirements are already identical to USP-NF 797." The clarification states that JCAHO expects organizations to assess any significant risks by July 1 and "implement the more basic elements of the plan." It goes on to state that "facility-based requirements of the USP-NF 797, only need to be planned for future implementation."