Industry: Healthcare
Locations: Dublin
Employees: 364+
Introduction:
Sports Surgery Clinic (SSC) is the leading private orthopedic hospital in Ireland with both a national and international reputation for orthopedic surgery and sports medicine. SSC is a centre of excellence in joint replacement (hip, knee, shoulder) and sports related soft tissue surgery.
“Flex helps us to simplify our operation, as we count with notifications and alerts during every step of the process. Information is organized and available at any time, bringing us the power to make effective decisions.”
Shane Robinson – Medical & Electrical Equipment Engineer
SSC has in excess of 40 consultants in orthopedic surgery and allied specialties supported by a team of highly specialized nurses, physiotherapists and other healthcare professionals. Their operation is massive with daily updates about their patients.
Summary
They needed a system which allowed overseeing of all departments in real-time and the tracking of all their equipment within as some departments use the same devices.
Flex has improved their data transparency across departments having visibility of deadlines and person responsible. At the same time, they can assign equipment and carry out inspections and maintenances on time.
Flex Manager eliminates the paper-based and digitalised their operation, interested parties receive updates constantly to ensure the operation is running properly and delays are highlighted.
Modules
- Equipment Register
- Equipment Assignment
- Subcontractors Manager
- Task Manager
- Employee Profile
- Scheduled Reports
- Notification Alerts
Improvement 1: Equipment Register
Sports Surgery Clinic has robust equipment to enable them to become market leaders in areas such as rehabilitation, biomechanics, SSC lab and sports medicine. The equipment is specialised and invaluable for their company. As different departments often share the same piece of equipment, it became difficult to keep track of their operation in real-time. They were using excel to trace all their assets. This method was not able to notify the assignment of assets and if or when they needed attention, both ad hoc and scheduled.
Rehabilitation team:
Responsible to keep the records updated manually. No traceability of who was assigned to each asset.
Management:
Difficult to keep up to date with all the inspections and maintenance, as dates and type of inspections were different on an asset category basis.
Solution:
The Flex Manager solution, streamlined their assets’ operation, giving the SSC the power to control what is happening at all times within the clinic. All records have the same structure and they are compliant with regulations. It reduced the amount of time used to spend updating the day to day activities and produced exact reports for high-level management.
Improvement 2: Equipment Assignment
Equipment assignment within SSC needed improvement. Previously, they had a paper-based sheet that was filled when someone took equipment from one area to another. It was difficult to see how long the colleagues retained that piece of equipment and relied on end user inputting accurate details. It was vital for them to digitalise that process and automate the information.
Rehabilitation team:
The person responsible for the equipment became critical in getting all the information about where and when a piece of equipment will be available for others to use. Information could be misplaced, forgotten or left behind when someone is on annual leave or has left the company, for example.
Supervisors:
They needed to see a real-time oversight on the allocation of key equipment, who was in possession of it, when it will be returned to plan the departments’ distribution and have a comprehensive history of assignment.
Management:
No visibility of which equipment unit levels and their usage level as their existing system made it difficult to assess the real demand on a daily basis.
Solution:
The integrated solution, Flex Manager, allowed Sports Surgery Clinic to tag their equipment and assign it in seconds by scanning NFC tags. All the information can be immediately updated on the platform giving visibility to all departments. This module improved the planning and communication for the whole clinic. Also, a notification system was created if there is any expire due date, in that way they could see who was the person responsible and send a reminder to return the item.
Improvement 3: Subcontractor Manager
SSC had more than one person responsible to deal with subcontractors. Sports Surgery Clinic kept spreadsheets in each department and used emails to get all their contractors’ documentation from various subcontractors. Safety details were not visible for interested parties unless management asked for them.
Co-Workers:
Contractors had different points of communication with SSC.
Supervisors:
They didn’t know when the subcontractors would change employees, undertake training or update their safety details unless they asked for it.
Management:
No feedback to subcontractors as they did not have a procedure to measure their performance.
Solution:
Nowadays, subcontractors have a single point to submit their safety information and update the people that are working with them, taking a chunk of work from SSC. The subcontractor module improves work-flow, pushes contractors to be more organised and does not leave every update until the last minute, and aided in creating a new culture for them. SSC has visibility of who is coming on-site, their identification and specific responsibilities. This has mitigated risk and mistakes as everything is documented digitally on Flex. The next step for SSC is to get all activities to register on Flex per area, bringing oversight of their subcontractors across departments.
Improvement 4: Task Manager
Sports Surgery Clinic didn’t have a system in place to trace responsibilities per department. They used to communicate directly with their supervisors if there was something specific to carry out. They had the need to create transparency from the nurses’ department to other departments, in that way they could have the opportunity to oversee the operation and the different requests per area.
Nurses:
They needed a fast response to all the queries coming from their patients.
Supervisors:
Supervisors didn’t have visibility of their employees’ responsibilities.
Managers:
No statistical analysis of how many tasks where completed per department and the average time of responses from their team.
Solution:
At the moment, Sports Surgery Clinic wants to start the training to implement the task manager module in order to improve its data transparency and effectiveness of their workflow. They are going to start by giving access to the nurses to log any requested task through the system. In that way, the person responsible can receive notifications in real-time and the supervisors can check the person responsible and the timeline that has been assigned. As everything is interlinked the records are available 24/7 for the management team.
Improvement 5: Scheduled Reporting
Reporting used to be paper-based, taking a considerable amount of time to compile the information, in some cases. As every department did it differently, the information saved on their desktop but not on their drive, sometimes leaving supervisors with the wrong documentation. Assets especially were one of the most complicated areas to compile reports from as each area had a different person responsible for those assets and the assets maintenance and inspections were completed external.
Personnel per department:
Responsible to keep up to date each piece of equipment’s maintenance and inspection history. Not everyone had the same methodology so all the reports each month were reported differently.
Supervisors:
Difficult to receive accurate updates of the operation on a regular basis.
Management:
No dashboards displaying key indicators.
Solution:
Flex Manager integrated solution, gave SSC the opportunity to customise their own reports, select the frequency they wanted to receive it and to include all the key facts that are relevant for them. For example: now the person responsible for all the equipment received reports to his email on weekly-basis, where he can see all the equipment that it has maintenance and inspections scheduled, so he can plan his week ahead and his team before the time expires. Planning is key for SSC and this is why Flex Manager has became an effective ally to record their execution.
Improvement 6: Notification Alerts
In the past notifications generally came from a supervisor. SSC did not have a system in place to send automatic reminders.
Employees:
Self-organisation methods to remember their responsibilities. Upload manual documents to folders to ensure all relevant documentation was maintained.
Supervisors:
No notification procedure if a person closes a task or finishes a job element.
Managers:
No tracking performance indicators over time.
Solution:
Notifications and alerts became key to SSC, they do not need to schedule alternative reminders as Flex Manager will notify them five days in advance of any task. Sports Surgery Clinic relies on Flex to keep everyone on track of their obligations. Notifications can be sent via email, push notifications on the app or by SMS. SSC also has the power to decide how frequently they want to receive it.