• The healthcare industry has three main subsectors — ambulatory healthcare services, hospitals, and nursing/residential care facilities.
• Patient safety efforts likely cannot succeed without safe healthcare workers.

Healthcare is involved, directly or indirectly, with the provision of health services to individuals. These services can occur in a variety of work settings, including, but not limited to, hospitals, clinics, dental offices, out-patient surgery centers, birthing centers, emergency rooms, home healthcare, and nursing homes.

The Census Bureau lumps the healthcare industry with the social assistance industry to form the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 62. However, three healthcare-specific subsectors include:

• NAICS 621: Ambulatory healthcare services. This subsector provides healthcare services directly or indirectly to ambulatory patients and does not usually provide inpatient services. Health practitioners in this subsector provide outpatient services.
• NAICS 622: Hospitals. This subsector provides medical, diagnostic, and treatment services that include physician, nursing, and other health services to inpatients and the specialized accommodation services required by inpatients. Hospitals may also provide outpatient services as a secondary activity.
• NAICS 623: Nursing and residential care facilities. This subsector provides residential care combined with either nursing, supervisory, or other types of care as required by the residents.

We know patient safety is a focus area for your healthcare organization, and keeping your accreditation in check is a priority. That means worker safety and health may not always be top of mind. However, consider this … can patient safety efforts succeed without safe healthcare workers? Probably not. Will patients give high satisfaction ratings without these? The answer is likely to be no. That’s because the hazards faced by healthcare workers may also impact patients.

No matter the subsector, healthcare employers, indeed, have workplace safety and health, as well as other compliance issues.