November is World Quality Month, a time when quality professionals across industries and around the globe come together to celebrate each other. It is also an opportune time to celebrate the dedication and hard work of quality professionals and the impact of quality initiatives on organizational success.
Didlake’s Quality Development Team and Initiatives
Didlake’s Quality Development team has 25 team members who lead the organization’s customer-centric quality assurance and control plans at contract sites and in support of departments across the organization.
“Quality is the thread in everything we do,” said Brandy Emmons-Powell, GWCCM, C.C.E., Director of Quality Development for Didlake. “You can’t have anything being performed procedurally without a quality check component. We check paperwork for signatures and make sure it’s done on time. We check that employees know how to do their jobs and take training.”
Emmons-Powell continued, “When it comes to working with people with disabilities and ensuring they have what they need to be successful, if we didn’t have quality checks in place, we wouldn’t be able to see that mission success. We wouldn’t be able to follow up with people and see how they are doing. The customers then get the services that they have contracted us to do. If we do all these things correctly, that can mean more work for us, which means more employment opportunities for people with disabilities. It’s this continuous cycle that has allowed Didlake to grow a lot in its 55 years.”
New Initiative: Annual Risk and Quality Improvement Plan for Rehabilitation
Every department in Didlake follows quality control standards and Didlake continuously works to strengthen and enhance its quality initiatives. One of the nonprofit’s newest initiatives is an Annual Risk and Quality Improvement Plan for the Rehabilitation Department. This plan identifies how the department can continuously improve safety and minimize risk; mitigate negative effects of potential errors or events; identify, analyze and prevent risks to improve quality supports, and increase the quality of services provided.
Quality Team Supports Grounds Maintenance and Warehousing Services
Didlake’s Quality Management team also recently expanded its support of Didlake’s grounds maintenance services, starting with updating the Quality Management Plans for all such contracts. Didlake plans to soon use CleanTelligent® software to conduct and document inspections for grounds maintenance services following contract-specific inspection templates. Didlake has used this software for its custodial contracts for several years. It allows Didlake to build custom checklists, broken down to very specific tasks, for the services performed. An inspector reviews the work performed and, for each task, notes if it met a standard or if there is any deficiency. If anything needs to be fixed, the system generates a work order. With 194,234 inspections completed as of earlier this month, Didlake’s custodial contracts average a monthly inspection score of 98 percent.
For its warehousing contracts, Didlake is required to meet stringent U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements. Didlake maintains a 99 percent accuracy rating for incoming pharmaceuticals and outgoing orders.
Quality Controls for Didlake Imaging
Didlake has also implemented quality controls for its commercial business, Didlake Imaging. The document scanning process includes two quality checks – once by the Scanning Technicians after scanning the documents and before indexing the files, and again by the Project Supervisor once a box is completed. The team scans the digitized files to make sure all the pages are there, and that there are no blank, dog-eared or upside-down pages. For Didlake Photo Imaging customers, the team counts photos prior to scanning to ensure all of the customer’s photos are scanned and follows a similar quality assurance process as for Didlake Document Imaging.
For additional information about Didlake’s Quality initiatives, check out this article.
