Smart Inspect – Healthcare Case Study
How one of the largest U.S. hospital management companies streamlined its environmental services and food operations with data-driven efficiency
Situation
One of the nation’s largest hospital management companies employs more than fifteen hundred staff members across its twenty-seven acute care hospitals in the United States. The company’s Director of Support Services oversees the environmental services (EVS) and food operations teams within the acute care division, and he recalls the team’s early days of handling daily cleaning inspections. “We originally started off using paper inspection forms,” the director said, “and we had a lot of binders that we stuck paper in and never did anything with. There was no real easy way to track anything.”
This approach was not only tedious and inefficient, it was also a drain on time and resources. “We lost time and money for sure,” the director said.
The director had previously worked for another healthcare facility that also went through a similar experience of too much paper getting stored and ignored in too many different places. The solution there had been Core America’s quality assurance platform, Smart Inspect.
“I had used Smart Inspect before, and Core America is a great company to partner with,” the director said. “The team gave me flexibility and was easy to work with, and the system can be customized any way you need it. So when it was time for us to look at a partner that would get us off paper and into a space where we could run reports and make good decisions based on the data, we chose Smart Inspect.”
I’ve looked at a lot of options out there, and there’s nothing that does what Smart Inspect does for us.
Solution
Developed by Core America, Smart Inspect is a quality inspection app used by cleaning industry professionals in fifty thousand facilities across the globe. The hospital management company has adopted the platform as an internal work order system for its environmental services team.
The platform creates work orders—called Smart Tickets—when a patient’s hospital room, an office, or a public space requires cleaning. It also automatically assigns Smart Tickets to team members, and once a room is cleaned, the associated ticket closes, providing a date and time stamp. The ability to easily collect this type of data has streamlined the division’s inspection process.
“We can easily see what team members accomplished throughout the day on a dashboard,” the director said. “We can determine where we are in our daily workload or if a team member needs extra help, so it gives us more visibility and allows us to be more efficient in the operation.”
Patient feedback collected via area-specific QR codes posted around the acute care facilities also automatically generates Smart Tickets within Smart Inspect. These tickets alert team members to situations that need more immediate attention, such as spills. This QR code technology and ticketing system have expanded into the hospital’s food operations.
“We place patient feedback cards with QR codes on food trays, which allows us real-time service recovery,” the director said. “If a patient completes a survey and reports not getting a certain item on the tray, we get that feedback immediately as the patient’s lying in bed. Then our team members can go to the patient’s room and provide the needed service.”
The company relies on Press Ganey for its patient experience scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys. The director’s division compares the HCAHPS scores to the Smart Inspect scores and has noted a connection between the two. Next, the company intends to find more of its environments in which Smart Inspect will make a positive impact.
“We’re definitely expanding and testing the system, which is working with no issues,” the director said. “For example, we’ve created inspections within Smart Inspect for some infection prevention teams in our healthcare environment. It’s a great program.”
Results
Powerful Data Analytics
The reports generated from the Smart Tickets are instrumental in influencing stakeholders’ decision-making. “It’s eye-opening to the C-suites when we show them these reports to indicate where we are in terms of average completion of the daily cleans,” the director said. “The data is powerful, and we didn’t have it before.”
Outstanding Customer Service
The director characterizes Smart Inspect’s Customer Success Team and responsiveness as “amazing.” “Out of all of the services or applications that fall under my responsibility, the Smart Inspect team responds the quickest by far, and they’re thorough. Also, when I have an idea, they always—one hundred percent of the time—figure out a way to make it work.”
Smooth Implementation
“The Smart Inspect implementation was very easy and painless,” the director said. “It was just giving a few pieces of data to the Smart Inspect team, and soon, we were up and running.”
Easy Customization
“Smart Inspect has boilerplate inspections that we were able to customize to pertain to us,” the director said. “I can also go in and quickly make those changes myself. The Smart Inspect team did a good job of enabling their clients to have that control.”
Privacy-Friendly Platform
Healthcare environments are concerned about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and any possible data breaches that impact patient privacy, but those using or considering Smart Inspect don’t have to worry. “The Smart Inspect system doesn’t require any local IT support, which is key in a healthcare environment,” the director said. “Our team manages the application ourselves, and when we can’t, we reach out to the Smart Inspect team, and they fix it or tell us what we have to do.”