Community Health Alliance Eliminates Excuses for Lack of Policy Awareness

About this Case study

Community Health Alliance manages about 250 policies and procedures within PolicyTech. And with multiple ways for employees to get to those policies and procedures, the organization is able to drive home the importance of staying on top of reading and following through on those policies.

1. Industry:

   Healthcare Services

2. Number of employees:

   240

3. Before:

   Manual processes in the organization drive need for policy software.

4. After:

   PolicyTech® helps CHA streamline policy distribution and identify potential risk.

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Challenge: A Better Way to Manage Policies & Procedures

When Mary Wherry was recruited to join Community Health Alliance, a Nevada-based health center, as its quality improvement director and compliance officer, she knew that the organization needed to have a robust policy management in place. Having worked with PolicyTech® before, she recommended the software to the organization. Before her first day on the job, CHA had tried a free demo of the software and then purchased licenses.

According to Wherry PolicyTech is the type of software that can make or break an organization. It can make distribution of and training on policies and procedures more efficient, and it can also reveal where there are major gaps and risks within the organization.

At a previous organization, Wherry saw firsthand where things could go awry. “They had a manual clearance process where people would put their policies in a red folder and it would get handed from desk to desk. The chief complaint was that it would sit on people’s desks for months or get lost.” That’s not an option with PolicyTech.

Solution: PolicyTech® Offers Multiple Avenues for Policy Management and Distribution

Community Health Alliance manages about 250 policies and procedures within PolicyTech. And with multiple ways for employees to get to those policies and procedures, Wherry and her team are able to drive home the importance of staying on top of reading and following through on those policies. “My point to the staff was, ‘I’m not playing around. I can tell whether you read a policy or not. The days of you saying you didn’t know what the policy and procedure was are over,’” said Wherry.

Employees are able to access PolicyTech through an app on their desktop, in their favorites, on the organization’s intranet - SharePoint. When a new policy is issued, employees also receive an email from PolicyTech that directs them to go in and review and mark that they’ve read and understood the content. “There’s no excuse. There’s four ways for you to get to PolicyTech. There’s no reason for you to say, ‘I didn’t know how.’”

Results: PolicyTech Helps Identify Potential Risks

PolicyTech has been able to show Wherry and the rest of the organization where there are potential job performance gaps. With policy management software in place, the organization can track job performance that is tied to specific policies.

If CHA has to hand out a disciplinary action with a particular employee because that employee wasn’t following a policy, Wherry can track that, yes, that employee did receive the policy and, yes, it was marked as read.

The organization can also tell how long it takes employees to read mandatory policies and procedures, which helps ensure appropriate engagement levels with materials. For example, if someone reads five policies in two minutes, it may indicate that particular employee didn’t give themselves enough time to thoroughly understand all the policies and procedures.

For Wherry, it all comes down to the fact that not paying attention to policies and procedures puts the organization at risk. “If people aren’t following procedure, then we’re going to have compliance problems. The best way to assure that we have a compliant organization is to have policies and procedures for people to adhere to.”

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About Community Health Alliance

Community Health Alliance is a community health center that believes in a personal approach to health care. CHA provides an extensive range of health care screening and prevention services, comprehensive primary care for all ages, pharmacy, dental services (preventive and treatment), management of chronic diseases, outreach to and services for homeless individuals and families, and behavioral health care. With six convenient locations, CHA is the largest primary health care provider to low-income individuals and families in Northern Nevada.