Huddle up! St. Tammany Health System goes on offense
By Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org
Drew Brees does it. Joe Burrow does it. And the doctors and staff at St. Tammany Health System do it, too.
First they huddle up. Then they go on offense.
Since spring 2018, the system’s leadership team has been meeting at the main Covington campus with department heads and other key staff for a daily “Safety Huddle,” in which they collectively look back at the previous 24 hours with a critical eye.
The ultimate goal: to learn from it, to anticipate potential future hurdles, and to make sure the next 24 hours go as smoothly as possible for patients and Health System employees alike.
“I really view our daily Safety Huddle as the one thing that has really catapulted us on our journey to high reliability,” said Melonie Lagalante MSHA MBA, St. Tammany Health System director of outpatient and diagnostic services. “The communication that takes place on a daily basis is so important and so impressive, and it really does come together to improve the care of our patients and the safety of our staff performing that care.”
Lasting 10 to 15 minutes, the daily Safety Huddle is really the culmination of a series of similar, smaller huddles held earlier in the morning in each STHS department.
“The night staff and the day staff have a huddle sheet that they complete together at the beginning of each shift with important information that they want related to the team,” said Cindy Ingram MN RN NEA-BC, director of women’s and children’s services.
Those attending the main Safety Huddle then take turns sharing their department’s concerns – if any – from the previous day. Possible solutions are discussed among the team and, afterward, an email is sent out to each department summarizing the topics covered.
It’s not all hand-wringing and finger-wagging, either. A sense of positivity pervades each meeting, with attendees uniting around the shared goal of enhancing communication and transparency to provide St. Tammany Parish residents with world-class care close to home.
“We do a lot of celebrating our good catches and our wins,” Lagalante said. “And we make sure that staff that are recognized in the daily Safety Huddles receive formal recognition so they know we, indeed, took their story forward and we used it to improve the safety of our patients and our staff.”
Pharmacy Department Head Wendy Talley RPh admits she was initially less than thrilled about the prospect of adding another daily meeting to her schedule. She became a quick convert.
“In the beginning, when we started the concept of Safety Huddles, I probably thought, ‘Ugh, another thing we get to do in the morning,’” Talley said. “I wasn’t sure what kind of value it would bring. But it doesn’t take very long when you start attending those Safety Huddles that you get to see that it really is very important. It gives us an opportunity. I think it puts the right people in the right place at the right time to communicate what’s going on.”
For example, she said, she might have a shortage of a specific medication in the hospital pharmacy. In an organization as big as St. Tammany Health System, getting higher-ups to recognize that issue and to consider possible solutions can be a challenge.
“But when we’re right there at the Safety Huddle, that’s something we can bring up and I’m able to handle it right then, first thing in the morning,” Talley said.
That enhanced communication means a certain level of nimbleness for Lagalante, whose outpatient and diagnostic services team is spread out at multiple sites across the parish.
“So, if I’ve learned from one leader that they’re experiencing slowness with the medical records system or a utility issue, I’m able to ask all my other leaders if they’re experiencing the same,” she said. “I can then coordinate the communication up to the Safety Huddle and look for resolution more quickly and effectively.
“In the past, prior to Safety Huddle, the team may limp along all day without me ever being aware there’s a challenge. Because we come together and we have that organized communication, we’re able to disseminate help to those outlying areas in a much more effective manner.”
That’s only one of numerous positive results of the Safety Huddle program, though.
“I’ve seen many benefits to our organization as a result of our daily Safety Huddle,” Lagalante said. “For one thing, it’s definitely fostered a sense of greater communication. There’s definitely more transparency. There’s definitely greater willingness for each department to come together to talk about things that may not have gone as well as they should have and to safely be able to talk about what we can do to prevent such things from happening in the future.”
Image: Nursing Supervisor LeeAnn Prisk attends a Safety Huddle at the St. Tammany Health System main campus on N. Tyler Street in Covington. (Screengrab from video by Tim San Fillippo)