Numbers at a Glance
1,000+ Employees | 28 Locations | 40 Hrs/wk saved
Problem
Collaboration is integral to the continued success of War Memorial Hospital. With the main hospital and 27 other medical care facilities spread across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, providing access for all employees to all current policies and getting all the department heads in the same room was a daunting challenge.
In addition to dealing with inefficiencies, War Memorial was at risk of falling out of DNV compliance. One of the keystone standards in DNV accreditation is a regular review of policies, which was cumbersome and not always completed within the required time frame.
Aside from the compliance issues, there was the added safety risk of nurses having outdated treatment information. The accreditation team had no way of knowing whether or not an employee had signed a Code Red Policy, for example, and no way of knowing if the version they attested to was the most current one.
Stephanie Pins is the Accreditation Manager at War Memorial Hospital and is responsible for making sure the organization stays DNV-compliant and continues to improve their standards of care. Their old system was burdensome, inefficient to use, and didn’t equip War Memorial with what they needed to ensure operational excellence. Angie Love, the Quality and Compliance Assistant has a passion for collaboration and recognizes the need for constant and efficient lines of communication between the leadership of War Memorial. Both Angie and Stephanie knew that without a robust policy and accreditation management system, the organization was vulnerable to reverting to their old ways of inefficient meetings and compliance risks.
“In a healthcare situation, not following the correct protocol could be the difference between life and death. With PowerDMS, the most relevant policies are up-to-date and available in all of our facilities. We did away with the three-ring binders and the old paper copies. It makes things so much easier.”
Stephanie Pins - ACCREDITATION MANAGER, WAR MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
Solution
Today, Angie and Stephanie use the PowerDMS workflow function to send the first draft of a policy to the relevant department heads for edits, approval, sign-offs, and eventually, publishing. There’s no more schedule-juggling to get everybody in the same room. PowerDMS makes digital collaboration easy so productive decisions can be made remotely across the multiple sites.
PowerDMS is also home to hundreds of documents including certificates, forms, and training materials. Not only are all the documents kept conveniently in one place, but proofs of compliance can be attached to their corresponding standards. A dynamic accreditation progress bar gives Angie and Stephanie clear feedback concerning their compliance with industry requirements. PowerDMS lets the accreditation team “set it and forget it” with automatic reminders. They input a custom reminder schedule, and PowerDMS does the rest, ensuring policy reviews are promptly completed.
PowerDMS is a secure central repository for all critical content. It also ensures that only the most recently published version of a document is accessible by hospital employees (medical, clinical, and administrative). This eliminates the risk of the War Memorial staff having outdated treatment information or protocols.
ROI
Angie and Stephanie estimated that the use of PowerDMS cuts down on approximately 40 hours of meeting and collaboration time. That’s the equivalent of the salary of a full-time employee. Not to mention the paper and printing costs saved by having all their content in PowerDMS.
Now Stephanie and Angie, along with the leadership of War Memorial Hospital, can rest assured that the latest version of any given policy is on every computer in all 28 War Memorial locations.
Problem
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Solution
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Challenging to collaborate with multiple sites on policies
Using PowerDMS reduces collaboration time by an estimated 40 hours per week