Multicare Health System (MHS) is a not-for-profit healthcare organization with seven hospitals and medical centers, and various other locations, and more than 10,000 employees throughout Puget Sound, Washington.
MHS’ compliance program consisted of a form supplied by the state health department that was taped to each of their refrigerators. The staff penciled in temperature and time/date data, and placed a mark on a graph to show the current temperature. The health system was also using paper logs to record data on blanket and IV warmers, crash carts, automatic emergency defibrillators and emergency eyewash systems, which then went in three-ring binders. This approach resulted in constant incompliance.
After implementing the EoScene eCMS™ Compliance Management Solution, a suite of web-based tools that enable organizations to more easily and efficiently manage their environment of care, the staff can record the temperature readings and other data in the system. If a temperature is higher or lower than the requirement, the staff must respond to several options, such as adjusting the temperature or contacting the engineering department responsible for the refrigerator. The staff can also freely enter the actions they took in a specified space.
If the staff does not check a temperature by a specific deadline, eCMS pages a team leader or nurse, and the computer screen turns yellow. If they still fail to check the temperature by the next deadline, the system pages a director with the problem, the related equipment and its location, and the screen turns red.
After installing eCMS, MHS was able to easily and quickly generate a compliance report for the Washington Department of Health on their refrigeration temperatures, which included the state’s temperature graph.
For management, eCMS provides an overview of the compliance status of multiple areas. The reporting function aggregates and displays data that shows where noncompliance is taking place, who is in compliance and who is not. Users can drill down to a piece of equipment on a specific day and see a graph with compliance percentages.
The staff at MHS particularly likes that the system is easy to learn and user friendly. They created an online automated training module, which enables staff to train on the system in less than 15 minutes.
EoScene and eCMS help hospital administrators, compliance officers, team leaders, facility managers, safety directors and heads of clinical engineering everywhere comply with regulations and improve quality of care. To learn more, visit www.eoscene.com.