Helping Keep Our Hospitals Safe
When you end up going to the hospital, there are numerous concerns racing through your mind. You’re probably worried about why you’re having to go to the hospital in the first place. You’re concerned about the quality of care you’re going to receive and how much it’s going to cost. You’re also probably wondering how long you’re going to have to be in the hospital.
With all of these concerns running through your head, you may not have stopped to think about who inspected the hospital you’re currently in. These inspectors play an important role in ensuring that hospitals comply with a range of state regulations intended to keep a hospital safe and its patients healthy. An inspector who’s willing to turn a blind eye to violations can do the exact opposite, and potentially expose Missourians to substandard services and facilities that threaten an individual’s overall well-being.
To ensure that these inspectors act in the best interests of the general public, I presented Senate Bill 415 to the Senate’s Health and Pensions Committee this week. This bill would prohibit the Department of Health and Senior Services from having an individual inspect or survey a hospital if they were an employee there during the past two years. My legislation also requires inspectors to disclose the hospitals they worked at over the past decade, and if they have any immediate family members employed at a hospital.
The benefit of SB 415 is two-fold. It works to prevent anyone with a vested interest in protecting the hospital from inspecting it. After all, safety is incredibly important at hospitals and for the sake of patients and employees alike, deficiencies should not be glossed just over because the inspector used to work there. Senate Bill 415 also serves to protect hospitals from potential retribution from a disgruntled former employee seeking to harm it. These individuals may try to carry out a vendetta against their former employer through a poor inspection and harm the hospital’s reputation. Either way you look at it, SB 415 ensures hospital inspections are based on facts, not feelings.
Overall, SB 415 minimizes conflicts of interests for hospital inspectors. I believe this legislation improves the overall quality of the inspection process, and I look forward to moving this legislation through the legislative process over the coming weeks.
Please feel free to contact my office at (573) 751-2076. For information about my committee assignments or sponsored legislation, please visit my official Missouri Senate website at senate.mo.gov/Bernskoetter.