Written by
Morgan Lallikos
Why Manual Survey Prep Is Putting Your Hospital at Risk
Often, hospital Quality management leaders and teams are charged with leading organizational-wide regulatory compliance efforts. This is no easy task with hundreds of standards and thousands of elements of performance within those standards to manage. Failure to meet standard compliance requirements can damage a hospital’s reputation, have serious financial consequences, and jeopardize patient safety. Additionally, many hospitals’ survey readiness efforts have grown stagnant, as they do not utilize the wealth of tools available to make the process more streamlined and effective. These organizations could be missing important steps along the journey to achieve standard compliance, placing themselves at risk for revisits, fines, or worse—patient harm.
Hospital Survey Readiness – Room for Improvement
Many hospitals find themselves in a state of reactive adherence with surveys, only addressing gaps in their compliance after receiving a citation. These hospitals constantly play defense for several reasons, the most notorious being manual survey preparation methods. Such tools -- typically spreadsheets and shared drives -- operate via manual input to report steps toward compliance, that can easily lead to human error or omission. To make matters worse, manual tracking systems are often siloed, meaning critical cross-communication may not take place, leaving standards unaddressed and unmet.
From Reactive to Proactive Readiness
To maintain regulatory compliance, some hospitals have shifted to a proactive approach to survey readiness. Vastian Readiness offers an integrated and automated way to achieve and maintain survey-ready status while keeping progress always visible across your organization. This way, teams can identify issues as they emerge in real-time, not after poor survey results.
Proactive readiness provides a host of benefits for hospitals. First, all necessary documents, forms, and steps involved in survey readiness are centralized in one convenient space, accessible to any team member that needs it. Teams are far less likely to have communication mishaps or lose key data with a Quality Management Solution that loops all standard owners and performing employees into the readiness process. Second, hospitals that utilize proactive readiness processes report higher rates of satisfaction, primarily due to a greater sense of security. When hospitals that deploy manual regulatory compliance management methods experience an unannounced survey visit, staff often must rush to amend performance gaps, leading to rushed errors. With proactive solutions like Vastian Readiness, teams can rest easy knowing that they meet the standards, and achieve and maintain high reliability.
Dive Into Details
- Real-time analytics and reporting
- Facility/system-wide integration that minimizes data siloes and facilitates the process between identifying an issue and coming to a resolution
- Timely, actionable insights allowing users to maintain evidence of standard compliance and drive KPIs proactively
- Always available and accessible
- Archived evidence can be synced over from prior survey cycles if still relevant
- Communication Center to remain connected to your frontline during onsite surveys
Next Steps
To learn more about how Vastian Readiness can simplify and support your hospital’s regulatory compliance process, download our eBook today!