When trying to keep up with a busy sterile processing department and operating room demands, some things can drop through the cracks. Those cracks can mean being out of compliance with hospital accrediting bodies. It helps to have a second set of eyes looking at your processes and guiding you through the morass of keeping all your bases covered.
CensiTrac will always support you, but growth is inevitable. That’s where Service+ comes in. It helps you maximize the use of your surgical asset management system and identify additional services that can fill gaps you didn’t know you had. The Censis clinical service team educators have experience in healthcare, from OR and SPD to Administration. They know your business.
Assessment of Gaps and Missed Potential
Service+ allows for an annual clinical utilization assessment done on-site by our clinical team who can identify both regulatory and documentation gaps and missed potential for fully utilizing your CensiTrac software. Typically, prior to having an assessment, clinical educators go over all your data to look for missing or questionable reporting. Then, during the on-site assessment, they look at the data in context during a walk-through with SPD management. Following the assessment, the clinical educator submits a detailed report and reviews it with management, identifying opportunities for process improvement, compliance issues, knowledge and documentation gaps, and suggestions for quality improvement initiatives.
For example, if a department is not scanning in decontamination, the Clinical Educator would discuss the clinical need and compliance importance of this step so the department can begin introducing scanning into the decontamination step and complete the tray lifecycle of care.
Another critical gap may be not documenting sterile loads as required by regulatory and accreditation agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, The Joint Commission and DNV.GL. Identifying incomplete documentation can save your institution considerable headache and avoid penalties. If quality assurance testing is not being done as required, our clinical educators can walk you through what the standards recommend so you can fix it. Clinical assessments can also uncover gaps in knowledge or procedures by individual personnel, who can then have one-on-one training to improve their performance and productivity
After reviewing the assessment and its recommendations, Service+ clients can elect one of several modules to fit their needs.
Education
The 32-hour on-site training for department staff, tailored to your particular needs, is where most Service+ clients being their journey based on the recommendations from their clinical assessment. From your CensiTrac clinical utilization assessment, a custom training plan is developed to address current use, implement new modules, learn new features, address practice gaps, and share practice recommendations.
For instance, you may have a module you are not fully using because not enough people understand it. If you are adding a new module, preliminary work to get it up and running is done before training, so staff can experience it in real-time. And because the training is done on-site, trainers may point out things the trainees can do to make their workflow easier. For instance, something as simple as moving an instrument scanner to the other side of the room, or using handheld tablets to enter data in remote locations can up efficiency and, therefore, accuracy.
Besides the electable on-site training and on-demand videos included with the standard package, the annual Censis Technologies Users Conference (CtUC) is the largest and longest-running users’ conference in the industry, offering cutting-edge insight from top Sterile Processing and Perioperative experts across the country. The Censis Essentials for Managers (CEM) quarterly course is another valuable training resource, which comes with 12 continuing education (CE) credits to maintain employee certification.
Data Management
Your institution may have a very robust training department, so another option for Service+ clients is the data service option, which includes three data projects of your choosing. As with training, the data projects are customized to your CensiTrac clinical utilization assessment. The Censis team works with you to identify key areas for improved efficiency, accuracy, and compliance best practice.
Some of the ways the data option can help up your game include:
- Adding container maintenance intervals to make sure your expensive instruments are in good repair, based on usage
- Adding substitute instruments to your product catalog to increase accuracy and efficiency during set assembly
- Adding container weights to prevent overloading of the sterilizer per the manufacture’s instructions for use (IFU)
Instrument Marking
You may have been doing your own instrument marking, but a cutback in staff or an influx of new equipment could make that a strain on everyday operations. Selecting CensiMark instrument marking as your Service+ option puts a marking expert on-site at your facility for one week to mark instrumentation. Instruments contained in trays, peel packs, and /or high-dollar instruments can all be marked to improve tracking at the instrument level. Marking your instruments not only allows you to track usage, specifically important for instruments with usage limitations, but can also allowtracking to patients.
CensiTrac is the industry leader in tracking and marking software, but many clients don’t maximize utilization of the valuable resource. By expanding use of CensiTrac with Service+, clients can be better prepared for accreditation surveys, increase efficiency, increase staff competencies, productivity and reduce redundant practices, all while tracking progress. Contact our team to learn more about how you can utilize Service+ at your facility!
