2018 Environmental Services Departments of the Year

ES Department of the Year Snapshot

Winners

• 500+ BEDS: Memorial Medical Center, Springfield, Ill.
• 250-499 BEDS: Children’s Medical Center Dallas
• 1-249 BEDS: Jane Phillips Medical Center/St. John Health System, Bartlesville, Okla.

Honorable mentions

• 500+ BEDS: New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York City, and Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center
• 250-499 BEDS: Woman’s Hospital , Baton Rouge, La.
• 1-249 BEDS: Wentworth-Douglass Hospital , Dover, N.H.

Judges

• Doug Rothermel, CHESP, Rothermel Consulting Services LLC, Florida
• Marci Butts, CHESP, environmental services director, West Chester (Ohio) Hospital, UC Health
• Nathan Bishop, T-CHEST, T-CSCT, environmental services manager, Job Options Inc., San Diego
• Eric Nowak, T-CHEST, T-CSCT, senior director, sustainability and environmental services, Geisinger, Danville, Pa.
• Tom Mattice, CHESP, T-CHEST, director of environmental services, Montefiore Nyack (N.Y.)  Hospital

SPONSORED BY

Because preventing infections, improving the overall patient experience and keeping a close eye on expenses are top priorities for hospitals across the country, environmental services (ES) professionals are integral to a health care organization’s critical mission.

That’s why we are proud once again to bring you the winners of the ES Department of the Year Award.

Presented by the Association for the Health Care Environment (AHE) and sponsored by Tork, an Essity brand, the award recognizes and celebrates best practices in cleaning and caring for the health care environment efficiently and effectively.

It highlights the outstanding achievements of leading-­edge ES teams in maintaining high levels of performance in cleaning, disinfection, infection prevention, environmental sustainability and stewardship, use of technology, patient satisfaction, education and training in critical areas.

In the pages that follow, you’ll learn how ES teams in three hospitals of different sizes and in different regions of the country improved their performances and outcomes by working together to overcome a variety of challenges while keeping a careful eye on budgets.

At Memorial Medical Center, Springfield, Ill., for instance, a teamwork approach utilizing technology and Lean Six Sigma methodology helped the ES department reduce infection rates, and improve patient engagement and staff satisfaction. The department’s team approach also enabled it to achieve savings and even reach beyond the ES silo to other departments to achieve still more savings.

At Children’s Medical Center Dallas, the ES team’s focus on the hospital’s core mission and its commitment to its employees led to improved hand-hygiene rates by staff and improved HCAHPS scores from patients. Additionally, a focus on staff satisfaction resulted in dramatically improved employee-retention rates.

2018 Winners

Memorial Medical Center leans on trusted methods

 

Children's Medical Center Dallas puts employees first

 

Jane Phillips Medical Center finds success with proven process

Finally, at Jane Phillips Medical Center/St. John Health System in Bartlesville, Okla., a team-cleaning approach and on-site learning lab resulted in climbing HCAHPS scores and declining health care-associated infection rates. The team’s culture of safety also reduced staff-injury rates, a major concern in a profession dealing with unforgiving equipment, sometimes dangerous cleaning chemicals and a variety of ergonomic vulnerabilities.

All three teams, which will be honored later this month at AHE’s EXCHANGE 2018 event in Columbus, Ohio, provide important examples to ES leaders and other professionals working in health care facilities about the value of setting high performance goals and encouraging collaboration and innovation to meet them.