From the Minnesota Office of Continuous Improvement April Newsletter

The Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs (MDVA) has reduced employee and resident safety incidents at its Silver Bay Veterans Home, thanks in large part to a number of recently implemented process improvements. Employees at the Silver Bay home used Kaizen, Lean, and Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement (QAPI) processes to guide their improvement efforts. By creating and redesigning various standards, review processes, and programs they are building the home into a safer place to live and work.

More specifically, MDVA installed new ceiling lifts, developed a safety officer position, and introduced cross-departmental safety education opportunities. Facility changes were made according to the ergonomic philosophy of fitting the job to the person and not the person to the work. This philosophy has been modeled by ensuring facilities and work stations have the appropriate, ergonomically correct equipment. Incident reviews are now completed by residents and employees immediately after all incidents using the root cause analysis (RCA) process. Finally, MDVA introduced household staff meetings, safety meetings, yearly safe resident handling audits, and continuing education and training for all staff. Across the board, the efforts have focused on proactive and preventative safety, and the results have begun to show. Both the number of reported injuries and costs related to workplace injuries are on a significant decline since these improvements went into effect.