We attended the quarterly stakeholder meeting with the Kansas State Fire Marshal’s office. We had a tough discussion on reports of bad behavior of inspectors at our member nursing homes. The fire marshal was adamant that they take such allegations seriously. They will continue investigating the reports, and have agreed to re-training inspectors on appropriate communication styles. If you have experienced any questionable behavior from a fire marshal inspector in the last year, please let me know. It is extremely important that we get these issues addressed.
We also sought clarification from the fire marshal on their policy regarding turning homes into the complaint hotline after the home contacts the office with a compliance question. In general, the fire marshal’s office wants to encourage providers to contact the office with any questions they may have about the life safety code. However, they did confirm that if the compliance question involves “life safety” issues they will follow up with the provider through a phone call or a complaint inspection. The fire marshal’s office stated that they have done this twice in the last three years.
The fire marshal’s office is working on moving the state to the NFPA 2018 code. This would cover state-licensed only providers, like assisted living and homes plus. The fire marshal is looking for comments from health care providers on what effect the code change will have on them. We do know that the move will generally relax some of our requirements issues, such as door locks. If you would like to view the 2018 code and any changes that will be made, email rachel@leadingagekansas.org.
