No more ‘average’ health techs!

When it comes to Q15 (safety) checks, which statement feels right to you?

"My health techs are pretty good at their safety checks."

"My health techs are not doing a great job with their Q15 safety checks."

Wrong! Based on our analysis of 100k+ observations, whichever statement you chose is probably incorrect, or at least an oversimplification. In fact, most units have high and low performing staff members. The trick is knowing who is who.

Why it's hard to tell

Unfortunately, there aren't great ways to measure safety performance. Some options we see are:

• Random spot checks of Q15 sheets, looking for missed checks, pre-filled checks, signs of "pencil whipping," etc.
• Random video audits (if your unit has cameras), looking for employees not conducting rounds appropriately (e.g., not leaving the nurses' station).

This can be frustrating for managers, who know safety checks are a risk but don't have reliable or scalable information to act on. It can also be frustrating for health techs: high performers get lumped in with lower performers, or low performers get a free ride.

What the data shows

Take a quick look at this employee analysis (names have been changed).

On the left are staff who were doing an excellent job of rounding; on the right are the lower-scoring staff members.

We created this analysis alongside our partners at BHSET, with special thanks to Garrett Craver, AVP Behavioral Health. The employee scores consider missed checks, late checks, and verified vs. unverified checks (whether staff were close to the patient or not).

With information like this, Garrett and his team can reward high performers and work with lower performers to correct the pattern or reassign them. The BHSET team is even working with their HR department to integrate safety performance into annual reviews, career paths, and compensation.

Deep dive: create a staff performance scoreHow we constructed the staff performance algorithms, by VisibleHand CEO Matt.

Get in touch

If you're using paper and want to learn about analog options for measuring safety, reach out at info@visiblehand.io. We'd love to learn about your challenges and help optimize your paper Q15 processes.

If you're interested in the VisibleHand safety rounding system that enables this level of analysis, visit visiblehand.com.