Open up and say "ahhh..."

Healthcare is a highly regulated industry, as such we open ourselves to scrutiny from any number of outside agencies who can drop-in unannounced and peek around to see what we’re doing and ensure that we are compliant, honest and are doing all we can to provide high quality patient care.

Last week we were subjected to one such unannounced drop-in, which lasted four days.

These are always stressful events as you are essentially opening up your entire operation for an outsider to analyze and pass judgment on. But, they are above all else tremendous learning experiences and a great opportunity to take feedback from knowledgeable and experienced observers and apply that to your operation to deliver higher quality care in the future.

While here surveyors examine everything from your human resources and finance functions to your delivery operations. They go out on deliveries and visit patients, talk to staff members at every level, walk through the building to look at how equipment and paperwork move around, and generally immerse themselves in your operation and look for areas of improvement. In short, it is a very involved process and is tremendously detailed and thorough.

When all is said and done you sit for an exit interview to discuss the surveyor’s findings and learn about where it is you are suggested to improve. This is never entirely surprising as you sit on a daily basis for briefings to learn about what they are seeing every day and where they have additional questions, but the exit interview is the final wrap-up of all observations and our last chance to ask questions and receive clarification from our on-site surveyors.

Our exit interview last Friday was incredibly enjoyable as the surveyors were complimentary of the entire operation, taking special time to commend the passion our team members have for the work and their extraordinary focus on delivering high quality care to our patients. There were suggestions for areas to improve, but they were non-critical in nature and had no material impact on our ongoing patient care.

This is important for our patients and professional partners – they understand how valuable our service is, and they can be additionally confident that we are running our operation in a professional and diligent manner, in a way that will help them care for patients more effectively and will deliver safe, consistent, and high quality service to our community.

I make special thanks to our entire team for their efforts throughout the survey and for the passion they bring to the job every day…it shows and was noticeable to outsiders almost from the moment they arrived.

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