Hospitals have different protocols—or none at all—when it comes to discharging patients to hotels. But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's bloodborne pathogens standard applies to all.
The Wyndham Beacon Hill hotel uses its proximity to Massachusetts General Hospital as a marketing tool. The hotel website includes a hospitals page featuring a blonde model in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck. The hotel offers a link to each of the city's hospitals, discounted rates for patient families, and access to a shuttle bus.
The Wyndham isn't alone. Often, patients have to travel long distances to places like Boston for specialized care. So hotels have grown up around large hospitals to offer shelter to caregivers. And sometimes patients, too sick to travel home or waiting for follow-up care, need a night or two of lodging as well.
But hospitals have different protocols—or none at all—when it comes to discharging patients to hotels. And hotels have different capacities for hosting them.
But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's bloodborne pathogens standard applies to all.
The workers at the Wyndham have complained to regulators that they were not trained to handle biohazards that they regularly find in guest rooms. They claim management doesn't supply them with the protective gear they need to safely handle and properly clean the bloody linens, vomit, and diarrhea of guests just discharged from a hospital.
Now OSHA is investigating.
All workers exposed to blood or body fluids, not only healthcare workers, are required to use universal precautions. Boston workers at some hotels say they are trained and equipped, says Tiffany Ten Eyck, a spokesperson for Unite Here Local 26, which is trying to unionize the hotel workers. That may not be the case at all the city's hotels, she said.
"We're still hearing from workers. It is clear there is a problem," she says.
A Massachusetts General spokesperson said the hospital has no formal affiliation with the hotel and has not received any complaints. Wyndham Hotels has denied the workers' charges, but did not respond to my request for comment.
Rather than send patients and families to hotels that may be ill-prepared or inappropriate for them, two hospitals have found another solution: They run their own.
A Different Post-Discharge Quality Strategy
In 2012, the University of Washington Hospitals and Clinics bought a nearby Best Western hotel, which is open to patients and other guests.
The Patient and Family Housing facility at the University of Utah Health System looks like a motel because it once was one. Located among a cluster of chain hotels near the Salt Lake City International Airport, it houses only hospital patients and their families.
The system's Huntsman Cancer Institute got the hospital into the housing business about five years ago when it took control of an apartment building and leased the 16 units to patients and families on a short-term basis. It was an old building with old furniture, said Adrienne Wilson, the hospital's lodging manager. With a budget that only covered the lease, she and her staff did community outreach to get supplies to update the complex.
Within a month it was full. There wasn't a common area, but families started connecting in the laundry room. When the weather improved, Wilson put grills and tables out on a patio and started on a more ambitious housing plan for the entire health system.
People who come with a family member for treatment or surgery need more than just a room near a hospital, Wilson says. "There is a lot of human interaction. Everybody is under the same roof going through the same thing, either as a caregiver or a patient. People with check in on one another."
"Everything pushed toward a more central housing environment for people, rather than having them sit in a hotel and be lonely and on their own." Now, Wilson says, "They are in hotels where there are conferences and people are partying."
Hospital leadership was supportive of the idea, so Wilson arranged to lease the 45 units on the bottom floor of a local hotel. They are now working on the top floor and will have a total of 92 units by July.
The head of housekeeping has worked in healthcare for more than 30 years, Wilson says. All the staff members are trained to handle medical waste from patients who may have just had surgery or given birth. One key element: All linens go out to a commercial laundry.
Deal With It
But Wilson is adamant about one thing: "Were not running a hospital; were running a hotel for patients."
So far, state and local regulators have seen it that way as well.
Wilson has some advice for other hotels that service hospital patients and their families. "If they are happy with the business, they just need to train their people to be able to deal with it," she says.
Turns out, hotels have to do this kind of training anyway. Hospital patients are not the only hotel guests who bleed and vomit and expose workers to used needles. OSHA requires training and protection for any worker who might be exposed to blood or what is referred to as OPIM—other potentially infectious materials.