At this meeting I gave a presentation – Challenges & Opportunities in Developing OHSMS Standards – that outlined five common barriers to implementing Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems.  Also giving presentations on this topic were Mike Seymour from OSHA and Barbara Braun from The Joint Commission.  Mike Seymour discussed the OHSMS guidance document that OSHA is currently in the process of developing and Barbara Braun discussed how the Joint Commission standards also include worker safety requirements.  As several of the attendees pointed out, there is a clear and obvious link between patient safety and worker safety.

The purpose of these presentations was to assist the HCSA Sector Council in developing implementation plans for the new National Occupational Research Agenda for this sector (currently out for public comment until the end of October 2009).  A key strategic goal in this agenda is promoting the use of OH&S management systems and improving safety culture in healthcare organizations.

The scary part of the meeting…

The critical issues that need to be addressed to protect health care workers – particularly as it relates to the H1N1 pandemic.  There was a great deal of discussion concerning the precautions that need to be taken related to providing proper respiratory protection - NOT JUST SURGICAL MASKS – and the current lack of hospital preparedness.  The importance of this topic was emphasized by the advisory issued by the Institute of Medicine yesterday that urges health care workers to use N95 respirators instead of surgical masks for protection.

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This draft accreditation rule sets out the requirements for certification bodies to obtain accreditation to their choice of -

• ANSI/AIHA Z10, Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (the US standard)
• CSA Z1000, Occupational health and safety management (the Canadian standard)
• BS OHSAS 18001, Occupational health and safety management systems – Requirements (the British standard, which is identical to the international OHSAS 18001:2007 standard)

The overall impact of this rule would be to provide certification bodies (registrars) the ability of obtaining ANAB accreditation of their OHSAS 18001 certification services, something ANAB does not currently offer.  Although some registrars are currently accredited to offer this certification by non-U.S. accreditation bodies, many registrars currently offer non-accredited certification to OHSAS 18001.

The Due Date for providing public comment on this draft rule is September 14, 2008.

The draft rule is short – 3 pages. 

The key points –

• An applicant must be already accredited as conformant to ISO/IEC 17021.
• ANAB plans to leave it up to each certification body to develop its own OHSMS auditor competency criteria.

The draft rule does not provide specific guidance as to what this OHSMS auditor competency criteria needs to be.

This is disappointing since ANSI just completed a revision of the U.S. supplement to ISO 19011 (ANSI/ISO/ASQ QE 19011S-2008, Guidelines for management systems auditing – U.S. Version with supplemental guidance added, published May 19, 2008) which includes guidance on the competencies that OHSMS auditors should possess.  The requirements in the ANSI standard are based on a position paper jointly developed by AIHA, ASSE and ABIH in 2005.

At a minimum, certification bodies should have to consider the guidance set out in this ANSI standard if they want accreditation by an ANSI-ASQ accreditation body.

If you agree, log on and let ANAB know.

© ENLAR^® Compliance Services, Inc. (2008)

CEN, in conjunction with other key stakeholders, is drafting a Laboratory Biorisk Management Standard.  This standard, based in part on the language in OHSAS 18001:2007, is being developed to set the requirements necessary to control the risks associated with activities in laboratories where biological agents are handled and to enable organizations to seek certification by external third parties.  It is a management system standard, based on plan-do-check-act, that is intended to be compatible with ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001.

The draft standard is out for public comment until September 25, 2007.  A copy of the draft standard is available at http://www.cen.eu/cenorm/businessdomains/technicalcommitteesworkshops/workshops/ws31.asp

© ENLAR^® Compliance Services, Inc. (2007)

When OHSAS 18001 was initially drafted in 1999, it was specifically written to be consistent with ISO 14001:1996, the environmental management system standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).  When ISO 14001 was revised in 2004, some of the alignment between the standards was lost.

In 2005, the OHSAS Working Group decided to revise the OHSAS 18001 standard to again align it with ISO 14001 and to improve it based on the experience of the standard’s users since it was first published in 1999.

This revision is the culmination of over a year of work.  An initial draft of the revised OHSAS 18001 standard was circulated in February 2006 for public comment.  Approximately 500 comments from 36 commentators were recieved and reviewed in an initial meeting of the OHSAS Working Group in Madrid, Spain in October 2006.  Because a number of significant changes were being proposed, a second draft of the revised standard was circulated for comment in November of 2006.  Again, many groups and individuals provided comments (approximately 540 comments from 46 commentators in 24 countries).  These comments were reviewed during a second meeting of the OHSAS Working Group in Shanghai, China in March 2007 and a final draft was agreed upon.  As a participant in these meetings, I can attest that they were exhausting!

In addition to alignment with ISO 14001, another major factor taken into consideration during the revision process was alignment with other occupational safety and health management system standards such as the ILO and the ANSI/AIHA Z10 standards.

Based on these inputs, a number of significant changes have been made to the OHSAS 18001:

• Improved alignment with ISO 14001:2004
• Changes in the areas covered by the standard
• New requirements related to hazard identification, risk assessment and the selection of controls
• New requirements for external consultation and worker participation
• Clarification of the role of incident investigation

These changes will be discussed in more detail in future blogs.

© ENLAR Compliance Services (2007)