Question

You have just been hired as a compliance officer for your healthcare organization, and you have discovered that the food services department of the organization is not in compliance with state food safety regulations for healthcare organizations. The board of directors has requested a report from you and your team that contains an outline of the issues that have been occurring within the food services department that have caused it to become noncompliant, a plan to bring the department into compliance, and a description of how you and your team plan to maintain the department’s compliance in the future.

Your report should cover the following topics:

• a description of the foodborne hazards that have occurred within the healthcare organization that have caused it to become noncompliant,
• why it is important for patient recovery that the food service department maintain food safety and become complaint with state regulations,
• the key elements of your compliance plan, and
• the importance of internal audits and project management in the creation, implementation, and maintenance of the compliance plan.

Your report should consist of at least three pages, not including a title page and reference pages. Please be sure to use APA formatting for all sources, including your textbook. You must use at least three sources, one of which can be your textbook.

Answer 1

Our team has been discovered that the food service department is not in compliance with the food state safety regulations for healthcare organization. The point to be noticed that food service department failed to maintain hygienic conditions and provide healthy food without adulteration. The food sample test report shows adulteration in food and failed to meet food safety standards in hygiene, it is a major issue which may lead to foodborne disease.

ADULTERATION OF FOODS

Adulteration of food is an age- old problem. It consists of a large number of practices, e.g,mixing, substitution, concealing the quality, putting up decomposed foods for sale, misbranding or giving false labels and addition of toxicants. Adulteration results in two disadvantages for the consumer... First, he is paying more money for a foodstuff of lower quality,.. Secondly, some forms of adulteration are injurious to health, even result in death, as for example, adulteration of mustard oil with argemone oil causing epidemic dropsy or adulteration of edible oils with trycresyn phosphate (TCP) resulting in paralysis and death.

FOODBORNE DISEASES

The term FOODBORNE disease, is defined as: "A disease usually either infectious or toxic in nature, caused by agents that enter the body through ingestion of food. "FOODBORNE diseases are on the increase throughout the world. Foodborne disease may be classified as:

A. FOODBORNE INTOXICATION.

1.. Due to naturally occurring toxins in some foods.

a. lathyrism

b. Endemic ascitis

2..Due to toxins produced by some fungi.

a. Alfatoxin

.b.. Ergot

.c.. Fusarium toxins

3..Due to toxins produced by certain bacteria

a.. Botulism

b.. Staphylococcus poisons.

4..Foodborne chemical poisoning.

a.. Heavy metals example, mercury usually in fish, cadmium and lead in canned food.

b.. Oils petroleum derivatives and solvents.

c.. Migrant chemical from package materials.

d.. Asbestos

e.. Pesticide residues (DDT, BHC).

B.. FOODBORNE INFECTIONS.

1..Bacterial diseases... Typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever ,salmonellosis, botulism, E. Coli diarrhea, non cholera vibro illness and so on

2..viral disease... Viral hepatitis,Gastroenteritis.

3...Parasites.. Taenasis, Hydatidosis, Trichinosis, Ascariasis, Amoebiasis, Oxyuriasis.

FUTURE PLANS

Be a compliance officer, my aim is to develop a well organized plan to avoid such non-compliance issues on food safety by implementing a detailed and systematic training to the team members. Training being an important component of the programme for the prevention of food adulteration and the importance of hygiene, health care organizations plan to organize a training programme for different functionaries responsible for implementation of the food safety norms. Hope these steps will rectify the failure and will function properly in future.