3 minute read
Improving the surveyor workforce reappointment process
Raelene Heaney Supervisor, Surveyor Workforce The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards, NSW
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Background
The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) is recognised as one of the leading healthcare accreditation providers in Australia. To maintain this status, the surveyor workforce needs to have the correct skillset, experience and expertise. This will ensure that the member organisations are confident that surveyors sent to conduct accreditation surveys are of the highest standard.
Problem/Aim
A process needs to be created to ensure that the ACHS can be confident that the surveyor workforce is: • highly skilled • experienced • proficient in all programs offered by the ACHS. The reappointment process is the pivotal point in the surveyor cycle that gives the ACHS an opportunity to reassess the skills of coordinators and surveyors. This allows the ACHS to assess their ability to: • use the electronic and Word tools for submission of survey reports • have a good rapport with member organisations • work cohesively in a team • write meaningful reports • conduct interviews on surveys • conduct summation meetings at the end of the survey. The reason for this project was to investigate and eliminate the gaps in the current process that have resultedin:
• reappointments being missed • surveyors being reappointed without meeting all the requirements • surveyors being reappointed without all required documentation being on file. It was evident that the entire process needed to be reviewed to negate any reputational risk to the ACHS. Therefore, the aim of this project was to have 100% of all reappointed surveyors meet all reappointment requirements within 6 months, and to ensure that all documentation of the new process is easily accessible to all members of the surveyor workforce team. As the ACHS is the leading organisation in accreditation services, documented and easily accessible evidence of the reappointment process of all surveyors is essential.
Measures
It was recognised that the current reporting system was inaccurate and the data untrustworthy. Investigations into the reporting tool were instigated. The reporting had irrelevant data and was not capturing the indicators required in the reappointment process. Documentation for past reappointments was cumbersome to locate and at times incomplete. This was of concern as this identified that not all staff could easily find current and completed required documentation.
Changes to the reporting tool were initiated and another relevant report was added to ensure that manual lookup was only limited to one component (feedback); this reduced the time in the administrative stage of the reappointment process for ACHSstaff. New reporting systems revealed missing documentation, which initiated a sub-project of the police record check as a requirement for appointment. After the data for the police record check were implemented
into the reappointment process, outstanding checks decreased from 131 to 12 in October 2017 (and have since decreased to nine outstandingchecks).
Design
The following interventions were introduced:
• a coordinator/surveyor reappointment form. This is a summary of all the requirements that the coordinator/surveyor needs to be reappointed for a further 2 years. This is kept in a folder and facilitates easy overview for reappointment or non-reappointment • a new education report. This captures all education that the coordinator/surveyor has attended, including mandatory criteria for reappointment.
Previously, this was a manual look up for each surveyor. The reappointment report was modified to include all relevant requirements for reappointment, to remove data that were irrelevant and to ensure user friendliness and flow. It was also tested for accuracy. The new education report was tested and did not initially capture all required data; however, it was modified and is now capturing these data.
Results
The present system enables 100% of all reappointed surveyors to have met all ACHS requirements. Refresher training surveys are offered to surveyors who have not met all requirements, and reappointment is not given until the training surveys have been carried out and evaluations are complete.
Conclusion
Interventions were successful in improving the reappointment process. All documentation is easily accessed by the surveyor workforce team. Since the introduction of the new processes, all reappointments meet 100% of the requirements. Reports are straightforward and data are relevant to enable a smooth reappointment process. A cumbersome time-consuming manual process has become a highly efficient electronic process. The project will be formally completed by July 2019 once a full cycle of reappointments has beenfinalised.
Next steps
Processes are now in place for 1-year reappointments to capture surveyors who have a small deficit in meeting allrequirements.
