How to manage water hygiene successfully

In our latest technical guidance article, he explores ‘some of the developments, pitfalls, and traps, that indicate the requirement for improvement in competence’.

The need to manage water hygiene in a robust, defensible fashion is vital in healthcare facilities, and indeed the HSE’s increasingly high expectations as regards the standards adopted by healthcare organisations in this particular field have manifested themselves in an increase in the use of supplementary water treatment, standards for risk assessments, and need for recognised trained, competent, appointed persons with suitable skills and resources to discharge their duties satisfactorily. The HSE has recently warned companies of the need to manage water hygiene in ‘a robust and defensible fashion’ – the result both of a string of improvement notices and prosecutions in recent years, and the industry reviewing and tightening the standards for risk assessment and risk management in water hygiene. In August 2009 Deba UK was prosecuted for inadequate risk assessments which failed to prioritise risk correctly in nursing homes in Wales. Unsafe levels of Legionella in the water supply at the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Trust in 2007, meanwhile, resulted in a fine (although it was not concluded, definitively, whether two deaths of patients from Legionnaires’ disease were due to exposure at the hospital or elsewhere), while, following an HSE visit in 2008, a director at First Metal Finishers was fined for neglect, and found to have ‘failed to put a suitable and sufficient management system in place’ for the control of Legionella in two cooling towers.

Understanding responsibilities