Selected Podcast
Ep. 20: Pursuing Zero Harm for WellSpan Patients and Team Members
On this episode of Inspiring Health, we’re taking a closer look at one of WellSpan’s eleven FY22 goals, specifically the relentless pursuit of zero harm. Historically we’ve focused on being injury free among patients, and as a healthcare system, this is absolutely where the focus needs to be. But this year we’ve deliberately designed the FY22 safety goal to reflect both a commitment to improving patient AND employee safety.
Featuring:
Roxanna Gapstur, PhD, RN | Joan Hovatter, RN
Joan Hovatter, RN is the Director of employee health and safety at WellSpan. Transcription:
Michael Carrese: You're listening to Inspiring Health with Dr. Roxanna Gapstur, President and CEO of WellSpan health as she hosts candid conversations about organizational culture, value and other pressing issues we face in healthcare and business today. I'm Michael Carrese. And Roxanna, tell me what we're going to be talking about today.
Roxanna Gapstur: On this episode of Inspiring Health, we're taking a closer look at one of WellSpan's 11 fiscal year '22 goals, specifically the relentless pursuit of zero harm. Historically, here at WellSpan, we focused on being injury-free among our patients and, as a healthcare system, this is absolutely where the focus needs to be.
But this year, we've deliberately designed the fiscal year '22 safety goal to reflect both the commitment to improving patient and employee safety. So today, we'll talk about the key initiatives that we're undertaking to improve employee safety across the system, how we're measuring success this year and going forward, and the ways every team member listening can take an active role in staying safe at work.
Joining me today is Joan Hovatter. She's a certified adult nurse practitioner, certified case manager and our Director of Employee Health and Safety at WellSpan. Joan has over 30 years of experience working as a nurse practitioner in employee and occupational health, both in industry and in healthcare. Joan, thanks for being here today.
Joan Hovatter: Thank you, Roxanna. It's my pleasure to be here. And I wanted to thank you for shining a light on this important initiative. Employee safety has been a passion of mine for most of my career, so this is terrific.
Roxanna Gapstur: Yeah. Thank you, Joan. I know that you and I both agree patient safety is a top priority. And here at WellSpan, we've worked hard to improve safety, but our patients expect that, they expect to receive the safest care and the best outcomes.
Well, we haven't talked about it much in the past, team members expect the same thing. No one wants to come to work and be injured, but it is happening here at WellSpan, isn't it?
Joan Hovatter: Yes, it is. Team member injuries are happening far too often as demonstrated by our current DART rate. DART is an OSHA term. It stands for days away, restricted or transferred duty. Basically, it's the number of employees who have missed time from work or have been restricted or transferred to another position because of an injury.
WellSpan's current DART rates vary by entity, but the performance is average overall. Employee health and safety has also added another internal goal to decrease something called the TRIR, which is the total recordable incident rate. This rate involves all incidents that are recordable on our OSHA log.
Roxanna Gapstur: Right. And our goal is to decrease the number of injuries among team members to zero. By 2025, we want to decrease our DART score to 25% lower than it is today. But we really don't want any of our team members being injured. And we're going to get there little by little as we work to improve employee safety.
Joan Hovatter: Exactly, Roxanna. Basically, we're talking about reducing the number of injuries by 2.5% or better this year. This year is our growth and learning year. So we've set a goal at 2.5% with the expectation that percentage will increase as we move closer to reaching our 25% goal by 2025.
Roxanna Gapstur: Okay. So let's talk about how we're going to make improvements, Joan. What comes first?
Joan Hovatter: Roxanna, you know better than anyone. The first step was the endorsement at the highest levels of the organization. That is seen in the parent A3 for the system. The improvement target for zero harm sits under the deliver priority for patient safety. This top level support is critical for us having a successful fully team-involved effort.
Roxanna Gapstur: Joan, I agree, and I know our board and senior leadership team is really excited about the zero harm goal. It's actually one of three goals that our senior leadership team believed to be among the most important to cascade to our entire organization in this first year of our lean management system adoption.
Joan Hovatter: Right. So that means every level of the organization has a specific target and is developing a plan to achieve that target all the way down to their frontline staff. Within my team, employee health and safety, we've designed an A3 that contains two large initiatives for this year.
First, we want to make sure employee health and safety is considered a consultant for every leader and team in the system. And secondly, to re-engage and re-energize the system employee safety committee. The committee will be co-chaired by myself and Maryellen Pfeiffer to ensure alignment of employee safety and patient safety.
Roxanna Gapstur: While we're on the subject of your team, Joan, I'd like to express my gratitude to you and to the employee safety team for working so hard to keep our team members safe during the pandemic. While every team was impacted, I think your team's importance became undeniable.
Joan Hovatter: Roxanna, thank you so much for those kind comments. And you're right, the visibility and purpose of my team just skyrocketed. And I share in the pride you feel. I work with an exceptional group of people who care deeply about employees. They did a tremendous job securing the safety of the team members, maintaining compliance with government and regulatory requirements and managing our day-to-day employee work-related needs within the department. It has definitely been a whirlwind.
Roxanna Gapstur: So within those two initiatives, Joan, that your team has designed, can you help us understand how you're supporting the organization toward our fiscal year '22 targets?
Joan Hovatter: Absolutely. One of our major projects for being a better consultant for the organization is to be able to track data. We need to identify trends and we need to be able to share this information with WellSpan leaders. Historically, this process has been manual, very difficult and a slow process. Recently, we implemented a new employee health and safety database called PureOHS. This program gives us the ability to more efficiently consolidate and organize reporting and enable leaders to use a web-based portal to track real-time safety data. Leaders need to know what's happening within their department as an important piece for lowering this DART rate and improving our internal goal of reducing those total recordable OSHA cases.
Roxanna Gapstur: That's a great step, Joan. And it aligns with the large amount of focus that we've placed on improving our data across the organization. Can you tell me more about the employee safety committee?
Joan Hovatter: Sure. The second of our two initiatives in employee health and safety is to bring the employee safety committee back to life. This body of problem solvers will come together to discuss and create improvements for the safety of our team members and ultimately our patients. They will lead the charge and guide the system entities for a system approach to our employee zero harm goal.
And this year, again focused on that DART rate score, we've set our sights on three focus areas, which data tells us lead the most frequent injuries. First is workplace violence; second, patient safety handling; and third, sharps and needle sticks. The subcommittees of the employee safety committee will be working to create project plans to address each of these areas and help support our team members improve across the system.
Roxanna Gapstur: Joan, that's a really smart approach, to stay focused on the three top areas. We know small injuries can turn into big injuries as well. So if we can reduce those small injuries, we have a better chance of getting to zero harm. So Joan, as we wrap up today, are there actions that our team members listening can take to support WellSpan's pursuit of zero harm?
Joan Hovatter: Yes, absolutely definitely. I would ask that everyone look at your team as a group we want and need to keep safe. When there's a patient in the OR, everyone on that team would do everything they can to protect that patient during their surgery and hospital stay. We need that same approach and look at our work in the same way.
Our coworkers should have the same diligence in preventing an injury and being safe at work. My first call-out is for our leaders. It is vital for leaders to prioritize safety within their teams. We need leaders to be in the Gemba and to coach their teams to real-time problem solving when a safety issue is identified. It's also extremely important that leaders create a safe environment where team members feel comfortable and can speak up about health and safety issues.
In addition, leaders need to continue to work with employee health and safety when there's an injury to help manage that staff member's injury and to understand what happened and why that incident happened. This will help mitigate those issues in the future to prevent a similar injury.
And for every team member, we need to embrace WellSpan's heads up, speak up culture. We must lean into the zero harm mindset and know that we can't make improvements unless we are obsessed with spotting potential or real errors and calling them out to our one-up leaders.
Roxanna Gapstur: Joan, that's exactly how we become a trusted partner, isn't it? We diligently spot and fix errors to their root cause. I want to thank you so much for joining me today to talk about this goal in your work and helping us achieve zero harm at WellSpan for our patients and our team members.
Joan Hovatter: Thank you so much for inviting me, Roxanna. This is a very welcome and exciting journey for our employee health and safety team.
Roxanna Gapstur: That's all the time we have for today. We hope you'll join us for the next episode of Inspiring Health.
Michael Carrese: You're listening to Inspiring Health with Dr. Roxanna Gapstur, President and CEO of WellSpan health as she hosts candid conversations about organizational culture, value and other pressing issues we face in healthcare and business today. I'm Michael Carrese. And Roxanna, tell me what we're going to be talking about today.
Roxanna Gapstur: On this episode of Inspiring Health, we're taking a closer look at one of WellSpan's 11 fiscal year '22 goals, specifically the relentless pursuit of zero harm. Historically, here at WellSpan, we focused on being injury-free among our patients and, as a healthcare system, this is absolutely where the focus needs to be.
But this year, we've deliberately designed the fiscal year '22 safety goal to reflect both the commitment to improving patient and employee safety. So today, we'll talk about the key initiatives that we're undertaking to improve employee safety across the system, how we're measuring success this year and going forward, and the ways every team member listening can take an active role in staying safe at work.
Joining me today is Joan Hovatter. She's a certified adult nurse practitioner, certified case manager and our Director of Employee Health and Safety at WellSpan. Joan has over 30 years of experience working as a nurse practitioner in employee and occupational health, both in industry and in healthcare. Joan, thanks for being here today.
Joan Hovatter: Thank you, Roxanna. It's my pleasure to be here. And I wanted to thank you for shining a light on this important initiative. Employee safety has been a passion of mine for most of my career, so this is terrific.
Roxanna Gapstur: Yeah. Thank you, Joan. I know that you and I both agree patient safety is a top priority. And here at WellSpan, we've worked hard to improve safety, but our patients expect that, they expect to receive the safest care and the best outcomes.
Well, we haven't talked about it much in the past, team members expect the same thing. No one wants to come to work and be injured, but it is happening here at WellSpan, isn't it?
Joan Hovatter: Yes, it is. Team member injuries are happening far too often as demonstrated by our current DART rate. DART is an OSHA term. It stands for days away, restricted or transferred duty. Basically, it's the number of employees who have missed time from work or have been restricted or transferred to another position because of an injury.
WellSpan's current DART rates vary by entity, but the performance is average overall. Employee health and safety has also added another internal goal to decrease something called the TRIR, which is the total recordable incident rate. This rate involves all incidents that are recordable on our OSHA log.
Roxanna Gapstur: Right. And our goal is to decrease the number of injuries among team members to zero. By 2025, we want to decrease our DART score to 25% lower than it is today. But we really don't want any of our team members being injured. And we're going to get there little by little as we work to improve employee safety.
Joan Hovatter: Exactly, Roxanna. Basically, we're talking about reducing the number of injuries by 2.5% or better this year. This year is our growth and learning year. So we've set a goal at 2.5% with the expectation that percentage will increase as we move closer to reaching our 25% goal by 2025.
Roxanna Gapstur: Okay. So let's talk about how we're going to make improvements, Joan. What comes first?
Joan Hovatter: Roxanna, you know better than anyone. The first step was the endorsement at the highest levels of the organization. That is seen in the parent A3 for the system. The improvement target for zero harm sits under the deliver priority for patient safety. This top level support is critical for us having a successful fully team-involved effort.
Roxanna Gapstur: Joan, I agree, and I know our board and senior leadership team is really excited about the zero harm goal. It's actually one of three goals that our senior leadership team believed to be among the most important to cascade to our entire organization in this first year of our lean management system adoption.
Joan Hovatter: Right. So that means every level of the organization has a specific target and is developing a plan to achieve that target all the way down to their frontline staff. Within my team, employee health and safety, we've designed an A3 that contains two large initiatives for this year.
First, we want to make sure employee health and safety is considered a consultant for every leader and team in the system. And secondly, to re-engage and re-energize the system employee safety committee. The committee will be co-chaired by myself and Maryellen Pfeiffer to ensure alignment of employee safety and patient safety.
Roxanna Gapstur: While we're on the subject of your team, Joan, I'd like to express my gratitude to you and to the employee safety team for working so hard to keep our team members safe during the pandemic. While every team was impacted, I think your team's importance became undeniable.
Joan Hovatter: Roxanna, thank you so much for those kind comments. And you're right, the visibility and purpose of my team just skyrocketed. And I share in the pride you feel. I work with an exceptional group of people who care deeply about employees. They did a tremendous job securing the safety of the team members, maintaining compliance with government and regulatory requirements and managing our day-to-day employee work-related needs within the department. It has definitely been a whirlwind.
Roxanna Gapstur: So within those two initiatives, Joan, that your team has designed, can you help us understand how you're supporting the organization toward our fiscal year '22 targets?
Joan Hovatter: Absolutely. One of our major projects for being a better consultant for the organization is to be able to track data. We need to identify trends and we need to be able to share this information with WellSpan leaders. Historically, this process has been manual, very difficult and a slow process. Recently, we implemented a new employee health and safety database called PureOHS. This program gives us the ability to more efficiently consolidate and organize reporting and enable leaders to use a web-based portal to track real-time safety data. Leaders need to know what's happening within their department as an important piece for lowering this DART rate and improving our internal goal of reducing those total recordable OSHA cases.
Roxanna Gapstur: That's a great step, Joan. And it aligns with the large amount of focus that we've placed on improving our data across the organization. Can you tell me more about the employee safety committee?
Joan Hovatter: Sure. The second of our two initiatives in employee health and safety is to bring the employee safety committee back to life. This body of problem solvers will come together to discuss and create improvements for the safety of our team members and ultimately our patients. They will lead the charge and guide the system entities for a system approach to our employee zero harm goal.
And this year, again focused on that DART rate score, we've set our sights on three focus areas, which data tells us lead the most frequent injuries. First is workplace violence; second, patient safety handling; and third, sharps and needle sticks. The subcommittees of the employee safety committee will be working to create project plans to address each of these areas and help support our team members improve across the system.
Roxanna Gapstur: Joan, that's a really smart approach, to stay focused on the three top areas. We know small injuries can turn into big injuries as well. So if we can reduce those small injuries, we have a better chance of getting to zero harm. So Joan, as we wrap up today, are there actions that our team members listening can take to support WellSpan's pursuit of zero harm?
Joan Hovatter: Yes, absolutely definitely. I would ask that everyone look at your team as a group we want and need to keep safe. When there's a patient in the OR, everyone on that team would do everything they can to protect that patient during their surgery and hospital stay. We need that same approach and look at our work in the same way.
Our coworkers should have the same diligence in preventing an injury and being safe at work. My first call-out is for our leaders. It is vital for leaders to prioritize safety within their teams. We need leaders to be in the Gemba and to coach their teams to real-time problem solving when a safety issue is identified. It's also extremely important that leaders create a safe environment where team members feel comfortable and can speak up about health and safety issues.
In addition, leaders need to continue to work with employee health and safety when there's an injury to help manage that staff member's injury and to understand what happened and why that incident happened. This will help mitigate those issues in the future to prevent a similar injury.
And for every team member, we need to embrace WellSpan's heads up, speak up culture. We must lean into the zero harm mindset and know that we can't make improvements unless we are obsessed with spotting potential or real errors and calling them out to our one-up leaders.
Roxanna Gapstur: Joan, that's exactly how we become a trusted partner, isn't it? We diligently spot and fix errors to their root cause. I want to thank you so much for joining me today to talk about this goal in your work and helping us achieve zero harm at WellSpan for our patients and our team members.
Joan Hovatter: Thank you so much for inviting me, Roxanna. This is a very welcome and exciting journey for our employee health and safety team.
Roxanna Gapstur: That's all the time we have for today. We hope you'll join us for the next episode of Inspiring Health.