Jackson Health: Adopt-a-Floor Program
Case Study | Jackson Health |
Who | Jackson Health System is a nonprofit academic medical system in Miami, governed by the Public Health Trust, a team of citizen volunteers acting on behalf of the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners. Jackson Health System consists of seven hospitals, two long term care nursing facilities, a network of urgent care centers, as well as several primary care centers and specialty care physician practices. Jackson Health System has been using VSys One since 2019. Volunteer staff use VSys One to manage volunteers. Volunteers use VSys Live as a portal and VSys Live Kiosk to check in and out. Jackson Health System also uses the Online Training Module and Schedule Lookup Tool. All sites share one VSys One database, which allows them to share a single VSys Live license and the other VSys Live tools across all sites in the system. |
Challenge |
In 2021, the volunteer services department at the system's flagship hospital, Jackson Memorial,
reached out to VSys One for assistance in automating their Adopt-a-Floor program. This longstanding program
was established so community-based groups, such as a civic organization,
corporation, or church groups could "adopt" a patient unit. The groups plan events based on the
needs of their adopted unit to help patients brighten their hospital stay. Examples of Adopt-a Floor programs include:
Examples of some Adopt-a-Floor participants are the Ronald McDonald House, Educational Leadership Institute, Jar of Hearts, and Make Em Smile as well as local businesses. One local organization has conducted a holiday parade with Santa and characters for over 46 years. |
Solution |
To set up this program in VSys, first a basic application form was created for a team or an individual representing an organization could sign up. Since this program began using VSys for applications, over 200 applications have been submitted. When filling out the Adopt-a-Floor application, applicants are required to identify the organization they represent, select a date and time for the proposed visit, identify the Jackson Health System site they wish to visit, and provide other information such as items they wish to donate. To see more about how the application is used, please click here to view Jackson Health System's Adopt-A-Floor application. Once the application is submitted, the volunteer services team at Jackson Health System receives a notification from VSys that a new application has been submitted. The designated VSys One user(s) review the application and either approve or reject the application. If the application is approved, VSys sends an automatic notification to the applicant confirming the date, time and place. Volunteer services populates the team profile with an assignment, which lists the name of the job or floor they are assigned to, the location, date and time. VSys does provide the ability to limit team size but Jackson Health System did not set a maximum number of volunteers per team. The numbers of volunteers visiting are limited to meet hospital protocols. There are guidelines that those coming on site must abide by. These guidelines are described in the application. After the service is complete, hours are entered for the visit and VSys sends an automatic thank you note to participants. If the application is not approved, an automatic notification is sent to the applicant letting them know that their request cannot be fulfilled at this time. Initially, the application only allowed for one event per group but within a year of rolling out the program, Jackson Health System found that participants wanted to return multiple times. In order to avoid VSys overwriting the previous visit by the group, VSys was modified to allow for multiple contributions by the same group. This involved revising the application form to include a Date Requested field, which created a certification called "Date Requested for Adopt-a-Floor". Periodic reports were created showing how many times a group visited and tracking key fields within the application form for statistical purposes, such as the requested site. From an idea concept to a successful initial deployment this project required the VSys team's assistance for setting up the application form and notifications. However, it required very little training and was easy to maintain by the client on their own after Go-Live . In order to setup this type of program in VSys, volunteer services staff managing the program must be knowledgeable on what information they would like to capture in the application form and be familiar with how notifications work. By using VSys to manage the Adopt-a-Floor program, Jackson Health System has eliminated manual paperwork and can easily report on the success of this program to hospital management. Over 200 applications have been processed using the new VSys configuration. The team at Jackson Health System continues to update the application form and notifications as the program continues to evolve. Jackson Health System is now planning to set up metrics within VSys to track outcomes. Data such as the number of items that volunteers have donated or how many patients attended an event can be collected. |