Janitorial Software at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital
With over 190 acute care beds and 135 long term care beds, the Medicine Hat Regional Hospital provides its services to a populated area of over 100,000.
Offering a full range of services, Medicine Hat was the first hospital to use Task Tracker janitorial software. In fact, the Director of Housekeeping defined the specifications for the original product, back in 1986. They currently have about 50 FTEs (full time equivalent staff). The Director was satisfied that the only way to ensure efficiency in cleaning management and quality control was to track every task done, in every room, on a daily basis. This solution was definitely something for the modern PC computer.
The Objective
To set up a system to get control of all the cleaning tasks. They would administer janitorial duties from a central location, ensuring control throughout.The Solution
We realized that constant reminding staff to do the daily tasks was not necessary. We put emphasis on the tasks that were not daily as they most likely neglected these. Considering that computers were new technologies (and not nearly as powerful as today's), this was still an ambitious goal. Was it possible? Would the staff accept it? Could management handle it? Could the software developers deliver a decent product?A few software packages existed that allowed users to enter data about tasks, rooms, frequencies and time estimates so mangers could estimate work loads. These systems were useful. However, they didn't contain a daily communication (report) to direct the staff and more importantly to solicit response. We rejected these systems, still popular today, and conceived Task Tracker.
Work orders were printed weekly consisting of about three pages per staff. They were cleared weekly, twice a week, or possibly even daily.
Result
The money saved in the first four months paid for the total start-up and software costs. Some other benefits were totally unexpected. A survey showed that the staff liked the system and did not want it removed. This lead to an increase in morale and efficiency. In fact, they had become dependent on it to maintain efficiency. They liked being organized better. A cost-efficient and powerful system was, and still is, used to monitor and track the housekeeping services. Medicine Hat Regional Hospital was the original user when it was in MS DOS and is using the Windows version with even greater satisfaction."Task scheduling is one of the most important factors related to Quality of Cleaning. They must schedule cleaning to be cost effective and the cleaning frequency is the prime controllable factor.
The Task Tracker system provides our Housekeeping with weekly work sheets of each task due. This system acts as one of our main on-going critical indicators to ensure that quality cleaning is achieved.
As an end user the system is very simple to use and provides weekly information regarding project work that is due. This project work includes anything that we clean every seven days or more. The weekly work sheets indicate the location and task including the overdue factor. This system negates the need for staff to manually keep track of what work they have done or need to do. Each staff member initials their work on the work sheet and these tasks are then cleared in the computer. The computer determines the next due date etc. The work sheet can also be set up to give staff an indication of what is coming due the following week.
The system provides the manager with an Over Due Factor report which indicates who is behind in their work. The system also provides an easy way and effective way to adjust how often a task is done. This is a very important tool when budget adjustments need to be made."
Darry Heidinger, Regional Manager Laundry/Linen & Site Manager Housekeeping
Medicine Hat Regional Hospital, AB