37 departments call in each morning at 10 a.m. to report any safety or quality issues that occurred in their department over the past 24 hours.  This CEO Daily Safety and Quality Call has been taking place every morning since February 2019, and, like the Huddle Boards, was one of the best practice initiatives adopted from the Lean trip to New Hanover Hospital.

Issue 60, Dec. 11, 2018, of the Joint Commission “Sentinel Event Alert” publication identifies developing a reporting culture and learning from close calls and hazardous conditions.  The YKHC CEO Daily Safety and Quality Call is a wonderful response to this TJC Alert!  Our Senior Leadership Team (SLT) participates in every call as a listener and facilitates the calls on weekends and holidays as one of the ways to increase not only the Culture of Safety at YKHC, but also to adopt a just culture that does not punish employees for making a mistake.

As with YKHC’s Lean journey, and Root Cause Analyses facilitated by Performance Improvement, one of the major foci of this call is to identify trends within and/or among departments reporting.  These trends are used to determine whether an A3 that is looking at process(es) would be a beneficial method of addressing issues.  As an example, as a result of the call, Materials Management, Inpatient, and OR collaborated and greatly reduced the number of missing critical supplies.

A few important things to keep in mind related to the CEO Daily Safety and Quality Call:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Don’t be afraid to report an issue; use an A3 to work on trended issues; or ask for help.
4. If an issue was reported in Quantros Safety Events, it must be reported on the CEO call.
5. Remember:  events submitted to Quantros Safety Events that occurred after the 10 a.m. call must be reported on the CEO call the next day. (This applies to weekend calls)

For questions, please contact Performance Improvement at ext. 6131