Interview with Brian Ricci, Division Director, Patient Solutions for Morrison Healthcare
Communication gaps across sprawling campuses. Little to no visibility to where staff are outside the kitchen. Inability to delegate properly. Difficulty in delegating effectively in the moment. Patient Tray statistics diminished by manual inputs. Food & Nutrition Service staff feeling disconnected, instead of a part of their larger team. How can we address these issues–and provide enhanced visibility into processes and frontline associate workflows so that hospitals can better serve patients and maximize efficiencies? Relay, the most recent addition to our robust portfolio of technological innovations, is setting the standard for a technology-driven approach to solve operational challenges unlike any other.
Hospital administrators are continually looking to drive efficiencies and gain targeted insights into their processes, and through Relay, our exclusive, cloud-based technology, frontline associates are empowered to instantly reach the people and resources they need to do their jobs well — while teams have visibility into real-time location data that enables them to make informed operational decisions and enhance patient and caregiver experiences through instant communication.
The Design:
Morrison Healthcare’s Patient Solutions team collaborated on the development of methods to track priority tasks to help Food & Nutrition Service teams streamline workflows and address challenges, such as the timeliness of meals. Patient Dining Associates are now able to communicate with their peers and leaders from anywhere in the hospital, getting an immediate answer instead of waiting to get back to the kitchen. It can be utilized effectively across any size facility, providing immediate access to the people and resources needed to care for patients. Operations now have visibility into key real-time performance metrics around both time and position, which includes instant location views and stationary users. This level of in-the-moment situational awareness across an entire campus can speed up processes, allowing leaders to proactively address gaps in the meal service.
Additionally, Relay collects thousands of data points per day, which can be viewed in summary graphs. These dashboards allow leaders to better manage their teams and productivity. Timeliness of a tray’s arrival to the nursing unit is a crucial KPI within our Bedside Program and drives both patient and nursing satisfaction. With Relay, we can track individual nursing unit arrival timeliness against each units’ meal-time targets. The most powerful part of it all is that the data is collected passively, with no manual inputs necessary. This strengthens the validity of our operational data and the decisions and actions we can take based off it.
This exclusive technology allows Compass One to engage in integration with data software platforms across food and support services, as well as Morrison’s proprietary software platforms such as MyDining, MyDelivery, and Taskvue. The software-based tool increases the speed and effectiveness of these integrations, and will allow us to do the work to be able to highlight the types of data points that are meaningful to our current and prospective clients, across multiple platforms. We are currently the only provider to provide passively- collected, reliable data related to the movement and tracking of patient meals and other patient-related tasks throughout our hospitals.
Our Successes:
Our WakeMed pilot was a quantifiable success, with onsite leaders noting that the technology has allowed them to better manage teams and improve key metrics. Associates were eager to replace the clipboard with Relay, and found that without this platform, they were unable to locate patient dining associates—or track if a cart full of ready-to-eat meals arrived on the unit. With this software in place, teams consistently reported effective communication during their shifts. This heightened, real-time communication has increased efficiencies and improved team morale by acknowledging team members who reach their goals through a reward and recognition program.
WakeMed was also able to leverage the Bedside unit arrival tracking data, and just by being aware of their timeliness metrics for the first time, were able to make specific adjustments and see their metrics improve.
There are no similar tools available in the healthcare market, which means that our clients have an efficiency advantage over their competition. Other companies may utilize walkie-talkies, but Relay adds data, transparency, and accountability through passive data collection.
In addition to WakeMed, Relay was piloted at Mayo Clinic Hospital, Saint Marys Campus, where the team demonstrated improvements in numerous key areas.
Testimonials
From Aisha Boston – CMC Main, Atrium System
“I was introduced to Relay over a year ago. My experience with Relay has been above par. The Relay team was very much involved in integrating the devices within patient dining at my last account as well as CMC to help with productivity metrics, tray tracking and creating real time communication opportunities for our management team and associates.
I have been able to identify high volumes of tray delivery on specific zones that were impacting the patient experience, tray runners that were less productive than average, and rapid responses from the managers when tray runners are in need of information or items while they are on patient units. Being able to identify these barriers gave me the opportunity to improve patient satisfaction by creating more tray delivery zones, and allowed me to coach and develop associates into being more productive, creating a culture of empowerment that prioritizes the patient needs.”
From Jason Mallow – Director, Atrium Pineville
“I have been in awe with Relay System. Their reliability is tremendous and the representative backing has been everything amazing! It’s amazing that we are able to track our staff’s locations, communicate with them anywhere in our facility, and the best part, communicate directly with those who find a way to take them home. Additionally, I found the staff laughing and having more fun with them than they anticipated. Even to a point where one staff member came to me and said “wow, these really help make my day easier and run more smoothly by simply being able to communicate directly with the kitchen and my other co-workers.” I was thrilled to hear this.”
From Sarah Meeks – Sr. Director, WakeMed
“The really great thing about having the data for timeliness of tray delivery is that we’re able to share that data that we have with our clients with the hospital and show it to them as a third party data. Here we are having a large percentage of our timeliness of tray delivery. Our units are getting their meals on time, being able to show the hospital that we are delivering trays to patients in a timely manner.”
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For more information, contact the following individuals to learn more and receive a pricing quote:
- Brian Ricci (Morrison Healthcare): [email protected]
- Barbara Sharnak (Relay): [email protected]
