Tips for setting a course you can be excited about in the new year

Updat­ing your Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Per­for­mance Improve­ment Plan? It’s the right thing to do – to main­tain high lev­els of clean­li­ness, patient safe­ty, and effi­cien­cy. And, it’s the right time to do it. Plus, it’s inevitable, hos­pi­tal lead­er­ship will like­ly request a Per­for­mance Improve­ment Plan ear­ly in this new year.

Here are some best prac­tices to con­sid­er when devel­op­ing your EVS process improve­ments.

Tip 1. Choosing Goals: Be Focused and Specific

EVS touch­es every part of the hos­pi­tal, from the lob­by to the OR and ER, com­pris­ing one of the largest head counts of hos­pi­tal staff. And, there’s no short­age of activ­i­ty for EVS man­agers and tech­ni­cians — from set­ting clean­ing pro­to­cols to attend­ing train­ing and edu­ca­tion, to per­form­ing the front-line clean­ing that fights infec­tions and helps improve patient out­comes. 

Because you man­age these many EVS respon­si­bil­i­ties on a dai­ly basis, you have like­ly iden­ti­fied sev­er­al areas where you would like to see improve­ment. And, you might be ask­ing your­self, “Where do I begin?”

The first part of this answer is sim­ple: Be Focused and Spe­cif­ic

It’s clear that you can’t tar­get every EVS respon­si­bil­i­ty for improve­ment at the same time. In our expe­ri­ence, it’s best prac­tice to select THREE goals and focus on them all year long. And be spe­cif­ic in your goal def­i­n­i­tion, as tempt­ing as it might be to set broad goals in the face of broad chal­lenges.

For exam­ple:

  • A non-spe­cif­ic goal: Reduce costs.
  • A spe­cif­ic goal: Decrease bio-waste dis­pos­al costs by reduc­ing improp­er use of bio-waste con­tain­ers. 

The par­tic­u­lar per­for­mance improve­ment plan you chart will depend on your unique cir­cum­stances, of course. Take a look at:

  • What you did last year in terms of per­for­mance improve­ment
  • Which new chal­lenges have come up that require new prac­tices

Tip 2. Make Goals, and Actions Toward Those Goals, Measurable

For each per­for­mance improve­ment goal you spec­i­fy, you will undoubt­ed­ly define the mea­sur­able out­comes. Impor­tant­ly, you should also design a process with mea­sur­able, spe­cif­ic action steps that go toward those out­comes. Design­ing a plan with spe­cif­ic action steps is rel­a­tive­ly easy. But, col­lect­ing, stor­ing, and report­ing action per­for­mance data can be dif­fi­cult and time con­sum­ing with­out the prop­er tools (see Tip 3).

Mea­sur­a­bil­i­ty
Tan­gi­ble: You might wish to reduce the quar­ter­ly cost for bio-waste dis­pos­al, or achieve cost reduc­tions for linens. Both of these exam­ple goals involve tan­gi­ble, mea­sur­able out­comes that are quan­tifi­able in pounds and cost per pound. And your actions toward those goals might be spe­cif­ic, such as prop­er­ly using bio-waste con­tain­ers, or stan­dard­iz­ing bed make up per depart­ment.

Less Tan­gi­ble: A goal such as “save tech­ni­cian time between room cleans” has a less tan­gi­ble out­come, how­ev­er,  than count­ing pounds and dol­lars at the end of a quar­ter. Yet, your actions steps that affect this exam­ple out­come can include some­thing more imme­di­ate­ly observ­able. Reor­ga­niz­ing and stan­dard­iz­ing the set­up of clean­ing carts, for exam­ple, can be doc­u­ment­ed in a quan­tifi­able way — per­haps as a num­ber of yes or no obser­va­tions. Goals with less tan­gi­ble out­comes are still wor­thy of your per­for­mance improve­ment efforts. The point is to design action steps that are mea­sur­able in some fash­ion, while also find­ing a way to mea­sure and doc­u­ment the change in your out­come.


Base­line: Know where you’re start­ing to deter­mine where you’re going
Once you define the out­comes and design the process actions to reach your goals, record a base­line mea­sure­ment. Mean­ing: Based on the out­come and action steps you design, what is the cur­rent mea­sure­ment of that lev­el, cost, or vol­ume? That answer is your base­line, from which your per­for­mance will move up or down.

Data col­lec­tion and report­ing with­in — and with­out — your depart­men­tal con­trol
Many of your goals will allow defined actions and pro­to­cols that let you col­lect the mea­sure­ment entire­ly with­in the bound­aries of your depart­ment. On the oth­er hand, some of your department’s per­for­mance may be mea­sured by third par­ties. For exam­ple, you like­ly have an ever-present goal of improv­ing HCAHPS scores. You may be tasked with improv­ing the response to a spe­cif­ic HCAHPS ques­tion, such as “Dur­ing this hos­pi­tal stay, how often were your room and bath­room kept clean?”

While the final improve­ment score is gath­ered out­side of your department’s con­trol, your process toward this tar­get can be designed to mea­sure what you can con­trol. For exam­ple, you know that patients tend to feel their room did not get cleaned in the event that the vital clean­ing steps took place while a patient was out of a room. So, you can devel­op a process where the tech­ni­cian leaves a note or table tent in the patient’s absence, or you may even have them return to the room to greet the patient at a lat­er time. Super­vi­sors can then sur­vey patients to track their per­cep­tion of clean­li­ness and whether they believed their room was cleaned that day.  Why? Because all HCAHPS ques­tions are a mat­ter of per­cep­tion. There are sev­er­al ways to improve per­cep­tion, while sin­cere­ly pro­vid­ing the essen­tial ser­vices that improve the patient’s stay.

As long as we’re talk­ing about per­cep­tion, you may be famil­iar with the phrase “first impres­sions are last­ing impres­sions.” We’re stat­ing the obvi­ous here, but it’s worth repeat­ing. That is, sim­pler tasks, such as the tidi­ness of the front entrance trash recep­ta­cles and clean­ing win­dows or doors should not be over­looked when design­ing your action steps.

Whether final improve­ment mea­sure­ments are tan­gi­ble, less tan­gi­ble, or with­in or out­side your depart­men­tal con­trol, your process design can include defined and mea­sur­able actions that can be tracked on a reg­u­lar basis. See Tip 3, below, for sug­ges­tions on col­lect­ing, stor­ing and report­ing data.

3. Measure at Regular Intervals

As men­tioned above, per­for­mance improve­ment mea­sure­ment begins with base­lines. Once base­lines mea­sure­ments are record­ed and your
process includes defined actions, those actions should be mea­sured and record­ed at reg­u­lar inter­vals. While inter­vals will vary depend­ing on the type of action, an estab­lished inter­val should be repeat­ed as con­sis­tent­ly as pos­si­ble. 

Your mea­sure­ment (data col­lec­tion) can involve sev­er­al kinds of sur­veys
You may do an objec­tive and fac­tu­al ATP or Black Light test, which records the observ­able out­comes of clean­ing prac­tices. Or, you may per­son­al­ly sur­vey your inter­nal cus­tomers about their per­cep­tion of your tar­get­ed areas. Your data may come from tasks checked off by EVS staff dur­ing their work day. You may phys­i­cal­ly tour the facil­i­ty dur­ing an inspec­tion, record­ing the con­di­tion of the floors, the pres­ence of tent cards on patient trays, etc. Final­ly, as we also men­tioned above, your improve­ment score may come from a source out­side of your depart­ment, such as HCAHPS scores.

Your depart­ment should tal­ly and report the results, at least quar­ter­ly. Report­ing to inter­nal EVS staff may occur more fre­quent­ly, even dai­ly or per shift for cer­tain actions. A con­sis­tent mea­sure­ment pace will allow you to track progress and adjust the improve­ment plan as need­ed.

Yes, there is a mobile sur­vey and inspec­tion app
Record­ing the mul­ti­ple sets of data points could be time con­sum­ing and over­whelm­ing. How­ev­er, there is soft­ware and app from Smart Facil­i­ty Soft­ware designed specif­i­cal­ly for Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Depart­ments. The pur­pose of the soft­ware is to sup­port the EVS mis­sion of clean and safe hos­pi­tal envi­ron­ments, a vital part of improv­ing patients’ stays and out­comes.

In addi­tion to max­i­miz­ing staffing effi­cien­cy, man­ag­ing work assign­ments, and enabling real-time EVS team com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the soft­ware includes mobile QA inspec­tions and sur­veys. The soft­ware is designed to record the results of sur­veys and man­age the data for easy retrieval and report­ing. With the software’s advanced sur­vey capa­bil­i­ties, you can build any sur­vey, any time, and con­duct it in the field or online.

Con­duct inspec­tions and sur­veys on mobile devices. The data uploads from across the entire hos­pi­tal for instant report­ing. Say good­bye to hand­writ­ten paper forms and data re-entry after data col­lec­tion. Choose from built-in tem­plates, or cus­tomize sur­veys in lim­it­less ways.

Equal­ly impor­tant is the abil­i­ty to access the data, share it, and report on it indef­i­nite­ly in dash­boards, cus­tom reports and charts.

Con­clu­sion: It’s that time of year
Take some time now to:

  • Select focused and spe­cif­ic goals for the new year
  • Make goals, and actions toward those goals, mea­sur­able
  • Plan to mea­sure at reg­u­lar inter­vals

Start the year with a fresh per­for­mance improve­ment plan that you can get excit­ed about. Set your depart­ment on the best course to meet the mis­sion of a clean and safe hos­pi­tal.

THOUGHT STARTERS: There’s a brief list of per­for­mance improve­ment goals at the bot­tom of this arti­cle.

Want to find out more about how Smart Facility Software can support your team? Call 800–260‑8665 or click here to contact us and/or schedule a demo today!

 


 

To get your thoughts mov­ing: Poten­tial Per­for­mance Improve­ment Goals

  • Imple­ment a QA inspec­tion pro­gram
  • Improve QA inspec­tion scores
  • Reduce turnover
  • Save time at set up: Orga­nize stor­age rooms — so access­ing them becomes more effi­cient and saves set up time.
  • Save time through­out the day: Stan­dard­ize cart set up — so no mat­ter what floor or what tech­ni­cian is assigned, they have a famil­iar cart set up and don’t have to alter their flow.
  • Reduce linen costs by bevel­op­ing a stan­dard bed make­up (depart­ment spe­cif­ic). 
  • Reduce biowaste costs
  • Improve HCAHPS scores by address­ing areas most like­ly to affect per­cep­tions:
    • Was the room and restroom kept clean?
    • How does the park­ing lot look?
    • Entrance cov­ered in cig­a­rette butts?
    • Glass on the doors clean?
    • Pub­lic restrooms cleaned?