In today’s health­care world of ACO’s, Val­ue Based health­care and LEAN man­age­ment sys­tem the EVS depart­ment has a real strate­gic oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute EVS staffing exper­tise that may save your med­ical cen­ter or facil­i­ty thou­sands.

The sec­ond of three pos­si­ble staffing oppor­tu­ni­ties in Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Depart­ments includes Inva­sive Care Case Response Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Inva­sive Care Areas in health­care may include Inpa­tient and Out­pa­tient Surgery Depart­ments, Endoscopy Ser­vices, Car­diac Cath lab, Labor/ Deliv­ery Units, Radi­ol­o­gy Pro­ce­dure Rooms, and Emergency/Trauma Ser­vices etc. require both between cas­es clean­ing (BCC) as well as ter­mi­nal clean­ing. Man­ag­ing the case turnover ser­vices for qual­i­ty out­comes, rapid respond and high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is not easy and may require one or more of the fol­low­ing tac­tics to remain cost effec­tive:

Lim­it “Locked In” Staff- A pro­duc­tive inva­sive care ser­vice sys­tem lim­its the num­ber of “Locked In” staff for BCC work to an absolute min­i­mum. This enable the depart­ment to build a team of BCC staff who can ser­vice case turnover for mul­ti­ple depart­ments. These staff mem­bers are also assigned oth­er work near­by which can be eas­i­ly deferred to anoth­er time in the day when case clean­ing needs are not need­ed. The reduc­tion of locked in staff reduces the num­ber of staff who are “ready for action” in favor of more pro­duc­tive uti­liza­tion of EVS labor dol­lars.

Embrace Emerg­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sys­tems – Lim­it­ing “locked in” staff will be much eas­i­er if effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems are employed. If the inva­sive care depart­ment has the tech­nol­o­gy to quick­ly noti­fy the EVS team via text mes­sag­ing a few min­utes before the case is com­plet­ed, the per­son or per­sons per­form­ing the case clean­ing can arrive at the pre­cise “wheels out” moment and case turnover time can be min­i­mized. This prac­tice could be as sim­ple as the pur­chase of cell phones or it may involve the pur­chase of some oth­er non­ver­bal noti­fi­ca­tion soft­ware sys­tem tied to the surgery or pro­ce­dure sched­ule. Of course the nec­es­sary equip­ment as well as agreed upon pro­ce­dures for the tim­ing of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and expect­ed response will be need­ed.

Imple­ment Inno­v­a­tive Train­ing Sys­tems – Anoth­er require­ment to accom­plish “lim­it­ed lock in” staffing will be inno­v­a­tive train­ing sys­tems that include com­pre­hen­sive BCC train­ing for a vari­ety of inva­sive depart­ments in the med­ical cen­ter and com­pe­ten­cy doc­u­men­ta­tion for mul­ti­ple employ­ees. This may mean an EVS work­er is trained to respond to any inva­sive care depart­ment and can demon­strate com­pe­ten­cy in includ­ing case turnover pro­ce­dures, sup­plies loca­tion, equip­ment operation/disinfection clean­ing steps and expect­ed suite or pro­ce­dure room lay­out for each inva­sive care depart­ment. Build­ing a team of inva­sive care area BCC clean­ers may be time con­sum­ing at the out­set, how­ev­er can result in enhanced morale, improved ser­vice to inva­sive care depart­ments, and con­sis­tent sup­port dur­ing vaca­tion peri­ods or a staff vacan­cy.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this arti­cle!

For more infor­ma­tion on soft­ware sys­tems to help you with Cen­sus Based Staffing, Inva­sive Care Case Response Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty or Col­lec­tions Ser­vices Man­age­ment vis­it www.smartfacilitysoftware.com.

Cindy E. Paget has worked in health­care since 1986, pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship devel­op­ment and con­sult­ing for Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices and Human Resources. Cindy is a mem­ber of AHE, is both CHESP and SPHR cer­ti­fied and serves as a con­ven­tion speak­er and writer for health­care lead­er­ship learn­ing events. Cindy holds a dual degree BS in Busi­ness Administration/Information Sys­tems and an MA in Orga­ni­za­tion­al Lead­er­ship and lives in Sequim, WA.