James Winthrope is the President/CEO of SU Medical Center, a 175-bed acute care hospital, a subsidiary of Hospitals R Us, Inc., a highly respected health care management organization. Accredited by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (Joint Commission or JCAHO), SU Medical has served the Holcomb community since 1979. Mr. Winthrope and his staff are committed to providing the highest level of quality care and advanced technologies to this growing community.
It has come to Mr. Winthrope’s attention that patients in the emergency room (ER) have consistently made complaints about the unsanitary conditions of the waiting room, the bathrooms, and most recently the overflowing waste bins outside the doors of the ER. After close investigation, Mr. Winthrope discovered that there were certain employees in environmental services (ES) department that regularly neglected their duties. Instead of performing their assigned tasks, they spend their time socializing on various floors and taking numerous breaks. Immediate action had to be taken to address this problem to avoid additional complaints and possible sanctions from state regulatory agencies.
Mr. Winthrope called the director of the environmental services department and requested that he provide a full review of all ES employees and the housekeeping rotation/schedule. After careful review of this information by Mr. Winthrope and the ES director, new rotation times were created for lobby and waste maintenance. A separate schedule was set up for bathroom cleaning and check-ups. Employees displaying poor performance were written up and issued a warning that the next offense would result in further action as per the facility’s disciplinary policy.