Monitoring COVID-19 initiatives and safety concerns at a comprehensive cancer center.

Abstract

247 Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought national and local concerns, particularly to a comprehensive cancer center. Cancer patients’ clinical immunosuppressed status puts them in a vulnerable position for serious complications from COVID-19, including a higher risk of death. The institution developed five operational priorities (OP) to minimize exposure to the virus and contain and mitigate COVID-19 transmission and saw the need to monitor and evaluate those priorities. The project aim was to develop a monitoring system to promote timely identification of system threats and failures of the multiple safety processes implemented by engaging and empowering the front line workforce and area leaders to report concerns through a reporting tool. Methods: The COVID-19 Safety Control Center was developed, which consisted of a triage controller, SharePoint tool for front-line and area managers to report concerns or questions using handheld devices and a telephone hotline for urgent/emergent issues. Delegates from each were designated to review and respond to the reports within 24 hours. Metrics were developed for each of the initiatives. An interactive dashboard was built to communicate to leadership the status and trends of safety concerns. Project leadership met weekly to evaluate its’ efficiency and efficacy. Results: During the first 60 days, 476 events were reported and, on average, closed within 19 hours. The highest entries were related to policy and procedures of the hospital entry points, COVID-19 testing, and patient care. No high harm events were reported. A decreasing trend in entries was observed coinciding with the institution providing timely information to employees through daily COVID-19 briefings, weekly town hall meetings and increased familiarity with institutional COVID-19 processes. Conclusions: When multiple interventions are instituted and compliance to these measures are required in a rapid time frame, there needs to be a platform to monitor the process changes and address safety concerns quickly. Providing timely resolution to concerns of the front line staff serve to identify the threats, decrease the potential failures and provide opportunities to improve processes. The steps taken by the institution are a part of the journey toward high reliability.