Georgia Southern University Health Services Case Study

Problem

Kim Packer, the quality compliance officer at Georgia Southern University Health Services, is responsible for maintaining the center’s AAAHC accreditation.

She maintains all the center’s certification and licenses, as well as coordinating risk management and maintaining policies and procedures. Packer also spends 25 percent of her time on clinical responsibilities, which limits the time she has to focus on compliance.

Georgia Southern used to keep all of its policies and procedures on the university’s shared drive. Every staff member had access to the policies on the drive, but no one ever really used it. In order to make sure staff members saw new policies, Packer had to give presentations at all the center’s different staff meetings, then track down any absent employees.

When it came to delivering AAAHC compliance training or continuing education on current issues, such as the Zika virus, Packer
was constantly sending out email reminders for the staff to attend training and complete the required tests. She also didn’t have
an easy way to track if everyone was up-to-date with their AAAHC required compliance training.

To make sure Georgia Southern met all the AAAHC standards, Packer would spend months hand typing out all the standards and checking them against the center’s policies and training. She kept some of the paperwork on the university’s shared drive, but maintaining it all was tedious and time-consuming.

“The AAAHC standards are loaded into the PowerDMS system, so I am able to map my policies and paperwork to each standard. Before, I hand-typed out all the standards and then answered the questions myself. It became tedious. With PowerDMS, it is a lot easier to keep up with things. When the standards change, it actually updates you and lets you know. That was golden. You can look at the old standards and the new version. That really was key for me.”

Kim Packer - QUALITY COMPLIANCE OFFICER, GEORGIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY HEALTH SERVICES

Solution

When Packer saw a PowerDMS presentation at a Southern College Health Association (SCHA) conference a few years ago, she realized the software would simplify Georgia Southern University Health Service’s accreditation process and make her job much more efficient and less stressful.

With the center’s policies stored securely in PowerDMS, Packer is able to quickly send out changes and updates and gather electronic signatures from every staff member. With PowerDMS’s online training and automatic reminder emails, Georgia Southern’s training and testing basically runs itself. Packer no longer has to spend hours sending out emails and chasing down employees—she can simply log in to PowerDMS to see when each employee signed new policies, when they completed training and how they performed
on any tests.

Instead of painstakingly typing out the AAAHC standards, Packer can map Georgia Southern’s policies, paperwork and forms to each standard through PowerDMS. She uses PowerDMS to keep on top of AAAHC updates, pulling up a side-by-side comparison of the old and new standards to see what has changed.

ROI

When Georgia Southern University Health Services first applied for AAAHC accreditation, it took Packer about two years to prepare for her self-assessment.

If she was still using her old paper-based system, it would have taken her months to update her self-assessment each time AAAHC published standards changes. Now, with PowerDMS, when the last set of standards updates were released, Packer was able to update her self-assessment in just two weeks.

Along with shortening the accreditation process, PowerDMS also saves Packer massive amounts of time and energy in updating and distributing policies as well as ensuring training and testing gets done. She’s able to maximize the limited time she has to maintain compliance, freeing her up to spend time in the clinic and make sure the center is running smoothly and providing the best possible service.

ROI

Time and energy saved in updating and distributing policies
Less time spent on tedious administrative tasks
Self-assessment updates cut from months to two weeks