When looking to build a hospital, choosing the right Project Management firm is crucial. You need a solid construction team, sure. But what about the accreditations, surveys, commissions, and regulations you have to keep in mind? Who takes care of all the details of where sinks go, how many dirty linen rooms are needed, and how to best control and prevent infection?

That’s where Hallsta comes in.

Mary Mendelsohn is Hallsta’s go-to infection control preventionist. She’s a Registered Nurse (RN), Certified in Infection Control (CIC), Healthcare Accreditation Certification Professional (HACP), and a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ).

Who better to ensure proper infection control than Mary? “Having worked the last 16 years in regulatory accreditation, infection control, and being an infection preventionist myself,” Mary says, “I’m able to bring together the regulations, recommendations, best practices, and operational realities to help clients solve their problems.”

In this 50th anniversary year of the Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APEC), and after a raging pandemic that halted our world for almost two years, infection control is on everyone’s mind.

At Hallsta, we direct clients to build the right structure to promote safe healthcare. That involves the appropriate placement of handwashing sinks, efficient workflow, and positive/negative airflow, to name a few.

“Many of these items are in regulation,” Mary says. “When people are building, in theory, they should be building all these things right. While consulting with Hallsta, people often find that things are forgotten or overlooked. Or maybe they meet the letter of the law, but they’re not always functional for the professionals working in that space.”

“We’ve worked in healthcare,” she continues. “We’ve been in the operational part of it. We can walk in and see that the placement or design of something isn’t going to work. So we start at the Design Phase and help the clients meet those regulatory guidelines, but also functional guidelines that everybody seeks for efficiency and good practice.”