Evangelical Community Hospital sees improvements in efficiency through ECRI’s Recall Management
Problem
Evangelical Community Hospital, a healthcare provider in Pennsylvania, was continuously expanding to better meet the needs of the local community. But its growth outpaced its alerts recall management process, challenging staff to keep up with critical alerts.
The growing volume of alert information, along with a manual management process, required more and more time from the Evangelical team. Before ECRI’s solutions, when an alert was received, Evangelical Community Hospital would review it to check if the needed item was in inventory. Their next step would be to notify the relevant department, which prolonged the resolution time. After all of that, their team had to fill out extensive paperwork to send back to the distributor or manufacturer. Keeping records on paper and in PDFs further increased the time needed for documentation and locating specific information. This largely manual process significantly affected their team’s efficiency in responding to and managing recall alerts.
Solution
The Introduction of ECRI’s Recall Management dramatically improved efficiency and turnaround times for Evangelical. “ECRI had already been providing data to Evangelical for some time,” says Scott Dewire, Director of Supply Chain Services. “They understood our challenges and provided solutions to meet them.”
After a smooth implementation of the technology, alerts from the Recall Management database automatically matched to products in the hospital’s inventory and routed quickly to the proper departments, greatly improving turnaround times. Automated delivery and response tracking offered clear insights into the current status of each alert. Electronic documentation replaced cumbersome record-keeping practices, reducing staff workload and greatly improving communication between teams and departments. With all important documentation in one place, responding to recall inquiries became a fast, simple process.
“Another value that we experience is the accountability,” says Dewire. “Through the dashboard, we can report on initiatives to inform and ensure the support of our executive team, receive actionable information, and help drive toward compliance of our policy and quality goals."
Result
By automating and streamlining alerts recall management, Recall Management increased Evangelical’s ability to manage and respond to critical alerts, helping ensure patient safety and provide compliance assurance. “If the FDA were to call today about a specific recall, we’d be better positioned to quickly identify how it was addressed and documented.” says Beth Bingeman, Recall Coordinator. They can also now easily share data with their executive team and other departments, ensuring everyone has insight to important information.
“ECRI has been the catapult that has moved the hospital exponentially forward in becoming efficient in recalls, alerts, and timeliness,” said Bingeman.