Every morning at 10 a.m., 37 departments call in the CEO Daily Safety and Quality Call to report any safety or quality issues that occurred within their departments over the past 24 hours. This daily call has been taking place every morning since February 2019 and, like the huddle boards, was one of the best practices adopted after a visit to the New Hanover Hospital to learn about how that organization has implemented Lean.
Issue 60 of the Joint Commission “Sentinel Event Alert,” published in Dec. 11, 2018, identifies developing a reporting culture and learning from close calls and hazardous conditions. YKHC’s CEO Daily Safety and Quality Call is a wonderful response to this TJC Alert. The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) participates in every call as a listener and facilitates the calls on weekends and holidays as one way to increase and promote a Culture of Safety at YKHC.
As with YKHC’s Lean journey, and Root Cause Analyses facilitated by Performance Improvement, a major focus of this call is to identify trends within and/or among departments. These trends are used to determine whether an A3, to look at process(es), would be a beneficial method of addressing corporate issues. As a result of the call, Materials Management, Inpatient, and OR collaborated to greatly reduced the number of missing critical supplies.
A few important things to keep in mind about the CEO Daily Safety and Quality Call:
- Reporting a safety/quality issue is a good thing! Fear of reporting or not reporting because you don’t want to draw attention to issues occurring in your departments is not beneficial to YKHC as an organization.
- If another department reports on an issue that is related to or impacts your department, call that department and work together to try to solve the issue.
- Don’t be afraid to report an issue, use an A3 to work on trended issues, or ask for help.
Questions or Concerns? Contact Performance Improvement at ext. 6024