Male Medical Staff Talking As They Walk Through Lobby Of Modern Hospital Building

Contributed by Virtual Manager

MedStar Harbor Hospital is a 150-bed acute care hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. The hospital was the nation’s first full campus to have automated workforce management run by Virtual Manager 24 hours a day, utilizing Virtual Manager and Crothall Healthcare’s HealthClean software platform. 

HealthClean unifies operations management duties and metrics in a single digital home platform that allows service providers to see work details in real time, augment their pandemic response, and respond immediately to crises. 

At MedStar Harbor Hospital, HealthClean identified efficiencies available in both room and discharge cleaning. Cleaning time standards had been unified based on traditional task assignments for an occupied room and discharge cleaning. HealthClean analysis allowed Crothall management to reduce standard room cleaning by 20 percent and discharge cleaning by 25 percent, with full compliance to room quality standards and no interruptions in quality expectations.

The software also helped redistribute workloads throughout teams. For example, the software found that, at times, some full-time employees were three to four hours ahead of others on completing checklists. Knowing this information incentivized the other employees and allowed Crothall EVS managers to move the more productive staff to other locations and tasks that had immediate needs. With HealthClean, start times no longer involved guesswork for managers. The platform records tasks with timestamps so gaps in productivity can be spotted.

HealthClean helped trim the department by 10 percent; with just over 65 FTEs before the introduction of the software, Crothall was able to reduce headcount by 6.5 FTEs. Three of these positions received new duty lists to serve MedStar Harbor Hospital elsewhere, while the other 3.5 FTE positions were removed, saving $133,000 annually. MedStar Harbor Hospital has also seen employee engagement improve with this data-driven approach. Managers can now make connections between EVS productivity and client-valued metrics such as Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores by comparing time frames. Now at-a-glance, all staff members can receive recognition and performance-based rewards with their work records available by the HealthClean platform.