Safety Rounding shouldn’t be an option!

Environment of Care (EOC) or Safety Rounding is very important for every healthcare facility to ensure safety for all employees, patients, and visitors. The Joint Commission no longer prescribes the frequency for these rounds, but rather says “GET THIS FROM THE CODE BOOK”. Data is required in order to determine how often a department / area needs to be rounded to ensure it's safe. Our recommended best practice is for every healthcare organization to complete an initial round, review the findings, review the risks related to the findings, and adjust the ongoing survey frequency based on the data. Too often healthcare organizations default to the previously established annual or semi-annual periods when the data will indicate that more (or less) frequent rounds will ensure a safe environment for the patients, staff, and visitors.

With an electronic data collection and reporting process for your rounds, your organization should recognize the Return On Investment in 6 months. This is based on the traditional manual and paper-based process of checklists, writing down findings, then sending emails to department managers, creating work orders, manually populating the excel reports, etc. This is very inefficient, tedious, and creates ineffective communication but fear not there is a better way! 

If you’re ready to move your organization out of the #2 pencil and 3-ring binder ages, ATG has a proven approach. We have over 200 clients in the country using our EOC Rounding program, and the solution has been built on the feedback received from our clients.  Over the years, we listened to our clients’ processes and struggles to create a sound strategy for EOC Rounding.  Additionally, our President @George Mills and his healthcare platform team update the solution as needed.

Our first step in starting the program is to identify the staff members responsible for completing the rounds, and who is responsible for corrective actions found during the rounds. Then each zone or area for the rounds are identified, and a schedule and checklist are setup. The checklist for each area can match the current one in place, or we have recommended questions to add to any form. Each checklist is loaded in to our iPad mobile application and all findings, data, and photos will be uploaded in to the cloud for web storage. Reports are also automatically created from the iPad rounding data for all findings, trends, and missing rounds.  ATG trains all users on the program, provides the ability to close the loop from rounds, and sends automatic email notifications to as high as 4 levels of escalation. The automatic emails can be sent to department managers, facilities staff, and up to the C-Suite. 

Tracking and analyzing the EOC data is easy to monitor on the connected ATG web portal, and the program also integrates with many CMMS work order systems. With work order integration, when the finding is corrected ATG is notified to update and email all necessary contacts. In the email, there is a link which directs to the ATG corrective action website and shows what needs to be corrected. If corrections are not made then further escalation emails can be customized to automatically send out. The ATG EOC Rounding solution is unique in that the iPad application runs offline, and does not need to be connected to WIFI. The data is stored on the iPad, then all emails/work orders/reports are auto populated when the iPad is synchronized.

With the healthcare industry asking for more visual reports, ATG developed a suite of dashboards which allows organizations to track, trend and easily get a snapshot of performance/opportunities for improvement. The dashboard as well as the other reports have recently been enhanced to represent the best practices from @George Mills and his JLL healthcare experts. Again, we see the ROI is within 6-12 months based on indirect costs from time saved, compiling data for reports, and automatic email features.  ATG developed this EOC solution, delivers the solution, and trains all staff members on the solution for successful use at the facility.  Please contact me at [email protected] to discuss further!