Senior living facilities face substantial OSHA fines year after year. One of the top citations? Violations to Respiratory Protection Standard 1910.134. Mobile Health has been providing respirator fit testing and respiratory protection consultations for 38 years. In this blog, we will highlight three compliance pitfalls that long-term care can easily avoid!
FAILURE TO ESTABLISH A WRITTEN RESPIRATORY PROTECTION PROGRAM
When OSHA walks through your doors, they will look for your written respiratory protection program. This program outlines how you plan to maintain compliance every year and will be used by OSHA to gauge whether or not you followed your own plan.
Your written program must detail the following items:
Respiratory Selection
Medical Evaluations
Use of Respirators
Maintenance and Care
Assuring Adequate Air Quality
Training and Fit Testing
Ensuring Program Quality
Many long-term care facilities fail to establish their written respiratory protection program because they have no idea how to write it (and OSHA doesn’t give you much help). We have sample written programs for long-term care facilities, or we can help you write yours! Just message our experts and ask for help with your written respiratory protection program in your message.
FAILURE TO RECORD MEDICAL EVALUATIONS
Medical evaluations must be performed before your employees first respirator fit test. This evaluation ensures your employees are medically able to wear a respirator and complete a respirator fit test.
Here is where senior living facilities get caught off guard:
Medical evaluations must be kept on record by the employers for the entirety of a staff member’s employment, plus 30 years. That is a lot of records to keep up with and a long time to keep up with them. That’s why Mobile Health’s HIPAA-compliant Client Portal does the recordkeeping for you. You send your employees a link to their Mobile Health online medical evaluation, they complete the evaluations, a Mobile Health PLHCP reviews the results, then records are uploaded straight to your portal in real time.
FAILURE TO CONDUCT ANNUAL FIT TESTING
Completing annual respirator fit tests is not only important to avoid OSHA fines, but it ensures your employees’ masks fit them correctly, protecting them from airborne diseases and other hazards. Respirator fit tests are an annual OSHA requirement. It’s the ‘annual’ part that long-term care facilities miss. Every employee, every year ─ no exceptions for OSHA. This can seem like a lot, but when you leverage Mobile Health flexible fit testing solutions, it’s easy.
For many of our senior living and long-term care partners, we recommend sending our on-site respirator fit testing team once a year to your facility to test all employees. Then for new hires throughout the year, we recommend you send them to one of our 6,500+ fit testing clinics, or train a few of your staff to perform new hire fit testing in-house with the Mobile Health DIY Fit Kit™.
NOT SURE WHAT TO DO NEXT?
If a lot of this sounds new or confusing, that’s okay! OSHA requirements can feel overwhelming, but talking these things through, answering your questions, and finding solutions are what we’re here for. Get started by sending us a message with your contact info to one of our respiratory protection consultants.
