How Hospitals and Senior Living Facilities have Adopted a Unique Approach to COVID-19 Activities using UNITY

Hospitals across the country are being overwhelmed with the rapid spread of the Coronavirus around the United States.  In addition to the stresses of clinical care this also puts tremendous pressure on Facilities / Operations Teams and the Environmental Services teams to ensure the clinical care equipment is sterilized and available, rooms are cleaned and sanitized, airflow quality management is maintained, and isolation units are tracked appropriately.  It is not only critical to track these activities for the safety of your patients and staff but also the costs of these activities for any potential reimbursements.

Implement Your Methodology

Tracking Categories

By creating a specific tracking/category tag, each work order is now tagged specifically for a COVID-19 activity.  By assigning this tag to each corrective and/or preventive maintenance work order, this large metropolitan hospital was able to track all activities within our UNITY™ platform.  Not only does this tag allow for work orders to be prioritized easily but it supports proper reporting. Generated reports can be provided not only to hospital management but also to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other regulatory agencies such as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Within the first 10 days of implementation, over 1,000 work orders were tagged with this category showing tremendous adoption across the enterprise.  Tags can also help your organization track peak times and other key performance indicators to ensure your demand does not exceed your supply of equipment or of team members.

Increase Preventive Maintenance Work Orders 

There is more to ensuring patient safety and regulatory compliance than a corrective work order.  Rooms and common areas must be sanitized repeatedly and frequently.  By creating a COVID-19 procedure, hospitals have been able to assign it to specific types of equipment to ensure sanitization is completed frequently and according to hospital standards.  Hospitals and Senior Living Facilities are both seeing an increase in this type of work order.  Don’t forget to attach your new category so your organization can track costs and time associated with this level of effort.

Tracking Isolation Units

Using SMARTPRINT technology, many hospitals have added an annotation layer that tracks their quarantine area or isolation units.  By communicating with hospital administrators, facilities teams fully understand the placement of patients, limit social interactions with unnecessary personal and prevent inadvertent exposures.  In addition to tracking isolation units, UNITY has also helped organizations track the assets in these contained areas to ensure proper cleaning and sanitation. In addition, if your isolation unit is temporary, using these layers can ensure you properly track the dismantling of this area so it can be transferred to general patient care when appropriate.

Interested in how UNITY from FacilityONE can help your COVID-19 activities?  Contact us to Learn More.