As the vice president of facilities for Journey Health a large mental healthcare organization, John Pockey is responsible for 80 buildings. The Checker is helping keep them safe.

Many of Journey Health’s buildings are residential facilities housing people suffering from a variety of mental health issues. Pockey has a team of five inspectors, and one of these inspectors visits each facility once a month to conduct site audits, looking for any damage and upkeep needed. While there, they also check emergency equipment to make sure it’s working—a job that’s particularly challenging in Journey Health’s homes.

Fire extinguishers need to be checked monthly in any building, and a tag on each extinguisher is supposed to document each inspection. But some residents with behavior problems like to remove these tags, Pockey said, making it difficult to prove the inspections have occurred in order to comply  with regulations that require monthly inspections.

Also, to keep residents from panicking and helping them evacuate if needed after a loss of power, each residence has emergency lights in the hallways and stairways that will stay on with battery power for up to two hours. These lights also need to be checked monthly, and Pockey wanted a consistent process for inspecting them  and documenting those inspections.

That’s where The Checker Software comes in.

Journey Health is now using The Checker Software for its monthly inspections of the residences, as well as for the organization’s administrative facilities and outpatient clinics. The software, which is provided as software-as-a-service (SaaS), is well worth it’s minimal cost, Pockey said.

“It’s cut out a lot of steps in our process,” he said. “It saves a lot of time.”

The software can be used on any device connected to the internet, and Pockey said his inspectors use it on their smartphones. That capability was a selling point, he said.

“Everybody has a smartphone, so there was no extra equipment cost,” he said.

One feature of the software that Pockey greatly appreciates is its barcode reader. Barcodes can be put on each fire extinguisher and emergency light. By taking a picture of each barcode, the software immediately knows which specific piece of equipment is being inspected.

“I’ve looked for years for barcode software, and the price was just too high,” he said. “But The Checker wasn’t.”

Pockey also likes that work orders can be automatically generated and sent to maintenance when a deficiency is found. And he appreciates that all inspections and corrective actions are automatically archived and aggregated.

“Down the road, as we get into this, it’s going to provide us with a lot of data analytics,” he said.

Journey Health signed up for the software early in 2018, and The Checker provided training sessions until all of Journey Health’s users knew how to get the most out of it. Inspection forms also needed to be built.

“The form-building software is really easy to use, but with 80 buildings, we had to make 80 forms,” Pockey said.

During the process of learning the software and building the forms, The Checker always provided  prompt assistance, Pockey said.

“Their technical support staff is great at troubleshooting problems and fixing whatever needs to be fixed,” he said. ‘They are top-notch.”

The Checker Software is well liked within the organization, he said. Inspectors find that it makes their job easier, and the organization’s leaders like it because they can see reports as soon as they’re finished.

“I highly recommend The Checker Software,” Pockey said. “It’s been extremely valuable to our organization.”

Sharing the Cost of Service

Journey Health System is a nonprofit organization in Pennsylvania that acts as an umbrella organization for its member affiliates, all of which are nonprofits focused on mental health. Journey Health provides these organizations with management, administrative, advocacy, and facility support.

Journey Health’s board of directors is made up of representatives from each of its affiliates, which maintain their independence but benefit from the synergies of working together. Journey Health’s mission is to help these affiliates share costs and be able to focus on their core services.

The support Journey Health provides includes fiscal, human resources, compliance, information technology, clinical best-practice consultation, risk management, and bulk purchasing.

Tags: why inspect?, facility audits, audit software, audit/inspection software

FREE eBOOK
WHY INSPECT?

Learn how inspections can increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve safety in a systematic way that can be sustained as a competitive advantage.

Checker-Why-Inspect-Book-Blog-Graphic