Authors (including presenting author) :
SZETO SY(1), WONG CS(1)
Affiliation :
United Christian Hospital, Property Management and Supporting Services Department
Introduction :
United Christian Hospital (UCH) is one of the busiest acute general hospitals with more than 1400 beds, over 430 AED attendances and 2300 outpatient attendances daily. This brings about enormous demand for efficient and quality cleansing service.
In order to have round the clock supervision at the door-step, UCH has formed a team of Special Squads. Instead of supervising the overall performance, we employed the concept of 村長 such that each group of squads is assigned to own certain floors or areas within the hospital compound. They are encouraged to deliberate how they would like their homeland be in terms of tidiness, efficiency of service rendered by others and performance of those serving this place. They would also visit the stakeholders of the zone, i.e. their 村民 frequently in the course of daily inspection. With a stronger sense of ownership but smaller scale of one’s responsible zone, 村長 are more ready to monitor their homeland and embracing a stronger drive for quality improvement. In addition, close communication with stakeholders also contributed to higher level of trust and timely response to feedbacks.
Objectives :
1. To enhance service quality and efficiency of cleansing service
2. To strengthen monitoring of performance of various supporting teams serving the designated zone.
3. To facilitate communication with stakeholders and better understand their expectations.
4. To shorten response time of terminal disinfection.
Methodology :
The entire hospital compound is divided into 4 designated zones (homeland), each under the supervision and management of 1 special squad comprising 3-4 OPAII.
Duties of the special squads are i) perform daily inspection to their homeland ii) directly communicate with endusers and collect feedbacks iii) rectify problems once spotted and iv) support terminal disinfections when needed.
Result & Outcome :
One remarkable improvement contributed by Special Squads Team is the shortening of response time for terminal disinfection. The percentage of response time within 30 minutes from receipt of call has increased by more than 30%. Positive feedbacks were also received from stakeholders in terms of effectiveness of communication, quality of cleansing service rendered as well response time to various feedbacks. Frontline workers also appreciated the program as they could have timely support from supervisors when needed and understand unambiguously the expected performance standards.
