Ridgeview creates a review process that’s right on schedule with Policy Manager

About the Customer

Ridgeview is a not-for-profit community mental health organization providing mental health care and treatment for adults, children, and families in Anderson, Campbell, Morgan, Roane, Fentress, Pickett, Union, and Scott counties in Tennessee. It was founded in 1957 and operates with a 22-bed inpatient hospital and numerous outpatient clinics serving East Tennessee.

Challenge

Provide the best education possible and respond quickly to change – these are important drivers for any facility, but when Kim Brennan joined Ridgeview in 2020, the organization had all of their policy and procedure documentation on paper, so every department across all of their outpatient locations had their own set requiring a manual process of updating and signatures. With over 1,000 policies at that time, the task of coordinating review, editing, and signoff was extraordinary. The policies existed in “mounds of binders,” according to Brennan, making it difficult to find the right policy at the right time for the Joint Commission accreditation process.

Solution

Having worked with Policy Manager at a previous facility, Brennan knew the program would be enormously helpful as they went through the task of reviewing all policies to eliminate redundancy and ensure standardization across departments. They simultaneously implemented Policy Manager alongside the formation of the policy review committee, which Brennan says has been helpful because it has centralized the location of all policies and allowed the committee to familiarize themselves with the system during this slower, more painstaking task.

Results

The committee is ready to begin its final year of a three-year review process and has been able to eliminate about 100 duplicate policies so far, in addition to bringing all reviewed policies into compliance. Brennan proudly notes that 100% of their policies are updated according to the set timeline now, something that simply wasn’t possible with the old manual system. With approval workflows significantly streamlined, she is confident they will finish their review work right on schedule. The next step will be adding forms to the system for a similar review process with the forms committee.