SPECIAL FOCUS
Bayhealth Sterile Processing team (photo taken at Bayhealth Kent Campus)
Bayhealth SPD punctures C-suite class ceiling
Might this be the tip of the iceberg? by Rick Dana Barlow
alk up to any titleholder – techni- cian, lead technician, supervisor, clinical educator, manager or director – within a hospital Sterile Process- ing & Distribution (SPD) department and ask him or her whether they – individually or department-wide – feel respected by others throughout the organization, and they’ll likely respond with tepid ambiva- lence or indifference or even an emphatic “No!” Not so at Bayhealth, a multihospital system based in Dover, DE.
W Through the twists and turns of neces-
sary changes in leadership, policies and procedures and standards, Bayhealth’s Sterile Processing team waved that emo- tional response goodbye a few years back. To achieve such a milestone, you prob- ably surmise that Bayhealth’s SPD team
simply started reporting to Surgical Ser- vices from Supply Chain … like so many other colleagues and competitors. Nope. Then you probably think that Bayhealth’s SPD team simply started reporting to Sup- ply Chain from Surgical Services … like so many other colleagues and competitors a few decades earlier. Wrong again.
So, if SPD doesn’t report up through Sur- gical Services and it also doesn’t report up through Supply Chain, where is its place? And how is that even possible, let alone allowable? “Originally SPD and Supply Chain were integrated, but it was identifi ed that they have unique skill sets and separate pur- poses for our health system,” said Brian Dolan, MHSA, CRCST, CMRP, LSSGB,
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Vice President, Resource Management. “Trying to bundle both may work for some organizations, but to truly focus on SPD- driven improvements we had to make a clear distinction between the two entities. They still work in concert with each other but are now more siblings than conjoined twins.”
The simple answer? You can trace this transformation to a C-suite attitude near the top after the department seemingly reached rock bottom before 2019. “Sterile processing had a history of lower performance here, and we had a [Joint Commission] survey that really triggered the need for a revitalized view into SPD,” Dolan recalled. “That was the tipping point – not a unique situation. [Bayhealth] overall had been looking at their talent and identifying areas where they needed
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