Studies show that paperless hospitals are better for both patients and staff, making hospitals safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. But it’s not just patient health records that are going digital: environmental services can benefit from going paperless just as much as medical teams.

For EVS teams that have relied on paper work assign­ments, tran­si­tion­ing away from paper can feel daunt­ing. But going paper­less doesn’t mean los­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion;  in fact, it builds stronger doc­u­men­ta­tion, by cre­at­ing records that last in an elec­tron­ic for­mat, and mak­ing it eas­i­er to track and report on that data.

Here are some of the ways that going paper­less can pos­i­tive­ly impact your EVS team:

Increased EVS Performance & Efficiency

Dai­ly assign­ment sheets have to be dis­trib­uted dai­ly for every sin­gle shift: morn­ing, evening, and night. That kind of paper­work starts to pile up quickly––and because of doc­u­ment stor­age require­ments, those piles of paper then have to be stored for sev­er­al years. With EVS soft­ware, there’s no need for stor­age beyond your data­base.

But it goes beyond stor­age: going paper­less also can go a long way toward mak­ing your EVS team more effi­cient, because it makes report­ing on your team’s per­for­mance so much eas­i­er. 

Paper report­ing is a much less effi­cient way of track­ing dai­ly per­for­mance. For man­agers to under­stand their team’s per­for­mance, they have to sift through weeks’ worth of paper doc­u­ments and ana­lyze them by hand. That process can delay deci­sion mak­ing beyond the time you need to make effec­tive changes.

Elec­tron­ic work assign­ments, on the oth­er hand, allow for instant data on progress toward dai­ly per­for­mance expectations––so you can rec­og­nize the obsta­cles that are get­ting in the way of your team’s suc­cess, and change course when need­ed. 

Better Communication

Going paper­less can also help keep you in con­tact with your team––espe­cial­ly when it comes to mobile tech­nol­o­gy. Using mobile soft­ware, you can drop paper check­lists, and instead sched­ule, assign, and reas­sign tasks to team mem­bers from your mobile device to theirs. Tech­ni­cians can mark tasks com­plete as they go, sav­ing them time, and allow­ing you imme­di­ate vis­i­bil­i­ty on what’s get­ting done and when.

Mobile tech­nol­o­gy not only elim­i­nates the need for paper: it also elim­i­nates the need for games of EVS phone tag, by man­ag­ing the entire work­flow from one mobile app. 

Better Record-Keeping

Keep­ing records of train­ing and inspec­tions can be cum­ber­some and dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile. But with a good EVS soft­ware sys­tem, report­ing is instan­ta­neous. Instead of scram­bling to dig up the nec­es­sary train­ing records when it comes time for a Joint Com­mis­sion review, you can call them up at the click of a mouse.

That goes for inspec­tion records, too. Paper inspec­tion records don’t have a lot of val­ue until they’re prop­er­ly ana­lyzed through elec­tron­ic means. And while spread­sheet pro­grams like Excel can make that process eas­i­er, they still rely on man­u­al data entry. 

With EVS soft­ware, there’s no need for data re-entry: all of your data is ready and wait­ing, so you can pro­vide the reports and analy­sis you need, when you need them. ES Optimizer’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment mod­ule means inspec­tions can be con­duct­ed on a mobile app, com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ing data re-entry, and pro­duc­ing instant reports and results.

Increased Cost Savings

While invest­ing in EVS tech­nol­o­gy does require an ini­tial cost, the cost sav­ings over the long run are sig­nif­i­cant. Reduc­ing your facility’s reliance on paper not only means sav­ing mon­ey on buy­ing, print­ing, and stor­ing paper––it can also save on oth­er costs, as well. 

Going paper­less through a soft­ware sys­tem like ES Ser­vice Opti­miz­er can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce man­age­ment time by automat­ing task assign­ments and mak­ing it eas­i­er to sched­ule project work. By enabling easy report­ing, it can also help you more eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties for addi­tion­al cost sav­ings and per­for­mance improve­ment.

More Environmentally Sustainable

In the 21st cen­tu­ry, more and more hos­pi­tals are invest­ing in envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. This can be a chal­lenge for EVS teams, who are tasked with keep­ing hos­pi­tal envi­ron­ments clean and safe for patients and staff. But going paper­less is one big way that EVS teams can con­tribute toward the greater push toward envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship. 

Because invest­ing in dig­i­tal solu­tions not only reduces your paper con­sump­tion: it also reduces the ener­gy it takes to trans­port and store that paper. Along with ini­tia­tives like reduc­ing dis­pos­ables, decreas­ing linen use, and reduc­ing harm­ful chem­i­cals in clean­ing and floor refin­ish­ing, going paper­less can go a long way toward mak­ing your EVS team green­er. 

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Ready to go paperless? Call 800–260-8665 or click here to schedule a demo today!