Q: What is one of the biggest challenges the center has had to face as a new ASC?
Cindy Evans: Anytime you open a new building of this magnitude and bring in new employees, there’s an adjustment period where we have to work through team work flows and getting people to work together. In our case, we had 120 new employees. We have to work hard to break down the silos between departments and look at this facility as one entity.
Q: What had to be done in order to quickly integrate new employees?
CE: One of the things we do here is have a team huddle at beginning of every day because we know it will help with our work flow. All members of a team come together for a meeting to talk about what’s going to happen for the day, which patients will come in, what are the risks in any procedures, is there anything they need to do specifically to assure that all the patients’ needs are met ahead of time and so on. It’s essentially an adhoc staff meeting to solve problems proactively. At end of surgical sessions they have the same huddle only to debrief, and during that time it’s an information exchange session designed to improve team performance. They talk about how they communicate to each other, what went well during any procedures and what could have gone better. The leader of that huddle will identify things from that day or week that need some improvement. Hardwiring those huddles at the beginning of the day and end of the day also help with team building as well as performance improvement.
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