Our People are Safer on the Job

The GBMC vision includes becoming the healthcare system where our team derives more joy from helping people. We have recognized that if our staff is not safe on the job, they clearly will not experience the joy in their work. For this reason, since fiscal 2013 we have had an annual goal to reduce employee injuries. In fiscal 2012 we had 370 injuries – more than 1 per day! In fiscal 2013 we had 327 and last fiscal year we had 231. This fiscal year, through January we have had 92. In the month of January, we had 7 employee injuries, the lowest since we started measuring!





We have not accomplished this by wishing or hoping or by lecturing our people. We did it by a thoughtful study of each individual injury. Mindy Beckwith, our Manager of Employee Health and our Employee Injuries Team have done a fabulous job in overseeing this system. When an employee is injured, his or her manager immediately studies the event and completes a form that includes a narrative about what happened. Every morning, the day’s injuries from 2 days prior (to allow adequate time for study) are reported on the Executive Lean Daily Management board. Our senior team looks for the learning from the injury and shares it at each of the LDM boards (we now have 30 of them) and later in the day, an email goes out to all that explains the nature of the injuries with suggestions for preventing them.  We have had major success in reducing employee strains and sprains especially from lifting. In addition, our learning from splash injuries and making the use of protective eyewear standard work, has almost eliminated blood borne pathogen exposures to the eyes.

We should celebrate everyone’s hard work in making us all safer but we cannot stop until we get to zero employee injuries. Thanks to all and keep up the great work!

Follow-up on the Timely Reading of EKGs

Last October, I wrote a blog about how Phil Komenda, our Director of Imaging and Cardiac Services, and his team were working to move our electrocardiogram (EKG) reading closer to 100% reliability and in turn moving us closer to our vision.
(http://ahealthydialogue.blogspot.com/2014/10/getting-to-level-3-mistake-proofing.html ).

Since that posting, Phil and a selection committee made up of nurses, biomed techs, cardiology techs, and IT, purchased 21 ELI 350 EKG carts that were distributed to the inpatient units, Emergency Department, and the Diagnostic Center.  Upon their arrival they were successfully configured and tested on the network. 

So, why is this important?

These new carts will offer significant enhancement for our staff and patients by improving operational efficiency and patient safety.  They will transmit the EKG tracing wirelessly by the push of a button; eliminating the previous wasteful steps where staff on our inpatient units had to find a wall jack, plug the cart into the jack, and then transmit electrocardiograms. These new machines transmit wirelessly once the study is completed thereby freeing up the staff member to do other work and eliminate waste in the system, as well as reduce transmission delays.

The second important enhancement is that all the demographic and clinical information is entered automatically through work list management. The nurse can either scan the patient’s bracelet with a barcode reader or type in a few letters of the patient’s last name to call up the patient from a list of orders on the EKG work list.  This process eliminates the time it takes to type in all the demographic and clinical information, as well as reduces error rates. When demographic information is typed incorrectly, the EKG cannot be matched to the order.

Training with the new carts is close to completion and will GO LIVE on Wed. Feb 18th. We expect that this enhancement will bring more joy to the areas providing care, and improve care by reducing transmission delays and the probability of the EKG not being read within 24 hours of the study.
 
I want to thank Phil and his colleagues for all their hard work and their commitment to our quadruple aim. 

Television Stars

Last week, Bonnie B. Stein, our HealthCare Board Chair, and I participated in a taped interview with our media partner, WMAR-TV, regarding the 50th anniversary celebration for GBMC HealthCare.  More on this at a later date.

What made me really proud was the touching story, on WMAR-TV, that highlighted the integral role GBMC played in meeting the healthcare needs and enhancing the quality of life for one family.  If you haven’t seen this clip, please watch it by clicking on the link below.  It will make you proud  to be part of a big team that delivers the care that one would want for their own loved ones!

http://www.abc2news.com/news/health/gbmc/lifesaving-to-life-changing-one-perry-hall-couples-love-affair-with-gbmc