Largest Acute Hospital in Central California is Going Paperless!
The Challenge
With annual admissions of over 18,000 patients, 27,000 emergency department visits and 2,100 births in a single year, the largest acute care hospital on the California Central Coast, was in serious need of eliminating their endless paper trail associated with work orders. Besides 366 beds, the hospital had a facility staff comprised of multiple departments that included Biomedical Engineers, Building Maintenance, Engineers, Pluming and Communications. Combined, these departments consisted of 33 facility staff members and 9 members of management. The facility’s horrendous paper trail was related to their current, inefficient and time consuming process of how work orders were handled within the facility. For example, in the current process, a nurse would fill out a work order, tube it down to the dispatch center, where it would then be sorted and placed in a mailbox. It was then up to the already inundated staff to check their mailbox periodically throughout the day and redistribute the requests to the appropriate worker. Once the work order request was fulfilled, the document was then filed away into the abyss of never ending paper where it was cumbersome to retrieve and refer back to again. As a result, with the current process, efficiently tracking or formulating reports from work orders with any details of labor, type of requests, or requester type were virtually impossible.
The client needed a module that would allow them to better document their activity, streamline processes across multiple departments, as well as improve communication amongst management and staff, all while minimizing their paper trail!
The Solution
Sentact consultants worked with the facilities managers and staff members to re-evaluate their current process and applied Sentact to enhance those changes. The client selected Viasant’s Sentact XM service management platform. The solution to go paperless was implemented within 45 days, and all Engineering, Plumbing and Communication departments began utilizing the platform immediately. The end product increased support levels for the end-user community through automated dispatch routing, documenting work history and labor, and centralizing communication. The Sentact solution:
- Automated the dispatch process by utilizing the hospital’s existing communication resources such as pagers and emails. (This allowed the organization to take more advantage of what they are already paying for!)
- Provided easy to use reporting tools to track and trend real time results
- Enabled all hospital staff to submit requests online and check status, without having to manually fill out work orders or call in for status
- Improved communication with personnel though “Newsflash” broadcasted messaging since email wasn’t being used routinely by all staff members
The Results
- Streamlined and automated process
- Increased user satisfaction
- Better service delivery
- Identified areas that required improvement through Report analysis
- Increased communication with facility staff and hospital staff
