CASE STUDY: The Power of SafetyZone Reporting for Small & Rural Healthcare Providers

A Success Story from Waverly Health Center

WHC is a 25-bed Critical Access Hospital in Iowa. WHC’s inpatient satisfaction scores rank it in the top 25% of hospitals in the nation and its HCAHPS scores are some of the highest among all U.S. hospitals.

TOTAL REPORTING MODULES   8

TOTAL EVENTS SUBMITTED  32,000+

The Need: Waverly Health Center (WHC) is a 25-bed critical access hospital in Waverly, IA that is committed to meeting the diverse needs of a rural population. Traditionally at WHC, adverse events were reported on paper and sent to the Director of Quality Services, who did their best to keep track of the data on Excel spreadsheets.

This process soon became cumbersome and ineffective. In addition, other staff members spent too much time chasing down papers when they needed to complete investigations and provide recommendations to prevent untoward events in the future.

WHC found that money and staff resources were being allocated to support a system that was inefficient and ineffective and it needed something that would accelerate appropriate decision-making and create positive change.

The Solution: WHC chose the Healthcare SafetyZone® system to help with its event reporting because it gives them the ability to streamline their data collection process, behind a user-friendly interface that empowers the rapid sharing of information and generation of reports to necessary stakeholders.

But the real power of the system comes in the ability to create custom data collection templates, which allows Waverly to expand the system beyond simple event management to take on a variety of other reporting needs that are essential for a small healthcare system with many disparate services and outreach facilities.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

"We are a small organization without a lot of staff, so we needed to prove that a return on investment (ROI) could be made quickly. Based on our calculations, we were able to realize our ROI on the Healthcare SafetyZone® within one and a half years.”

“Efficiency across the board! Staff get information quickly and follow-up has become more effective and timely... The SafetyZone is the tool that helps us to know what to do and provides a collaborative way to make change happen."

- Director of Quality Services, Waverly