Electronic Requisitions for West Des Moines Hospital Marlene Turner Supply Chain Analyst Iowa Health Des Moines 2009

Goals/Outcomes  To attain and maintain less than 1% error rate on missing information to purchasing the first time. Current practice is averaging 30% returns to managers because of missing information quotes, signatures and budget numbers, and StrataCap numbers by  This will be achieved though the implementation of an electronic requisition template, application of electronic signatures and electronic delivery to the purchasing department within hours.  Process to change from a hand written 3 part requisition form to an excell spreadsheet format, with macros to total purchase order and highlight needed signatures by total amounts.  To improve the process of purchase requisitions at IH-DM reductions in man power used to deliver the hand written requisitions to Senior management for signature approval

PDSA – THE CHANGES 1.We started with manual requisitions sent by house mail or hand delivery to management levels for approvals and signatures 2.Created the electronic requisition in excell as a template with macros to identify signatures needed by dollar totals 3.Began routing in Outlook through for signatures. 4. All documentation (contracts/quotes) sent with the requisition in a PDF format; complete the cycle at Central Procurement. 5.Highlighting the fields to identify whose signature is needed for information only i.e. Biotech, Construction 6.The need to add a pop up box for capital orders to state that they need to attach the quote to the 2 nd worksheet.

Lessons Learned : Found it beneficial to set up a formula to automatically total the purchase requisition Found it beneficial to set up macros to highlight the people who need to sign for approval, avoids confusion as to who needs to approve the order next and use of Automatic routing through .

Found it beneficial to set up a macro to highlight different departments that needed to also see the purchase order i.e. Biotech, construction and use of automatic routing to send these to the managers. Be sure to follow up with the end users to review the macro security settings and show them how to change to a medium security level to allow all the macros in the document to work.

Make sure to work with end users to show them the process in advance with a mock order so they are comfortable with moving around the document use of “live training” real document; helped to boost confidence in the management team that this could be as easy as it seems. We added a separate work sheet with step by step instructions to the process to allow users the freedom to maneuver around the document before the real thing came through. Additional training attached to each document to provide instant reference information.

The need to move slowly to track success and complete the training needed, will allow for confidence and success for this project to be spread throughout the IH-DM system.

NEXT STEPS Schedule meetings with Central Procurement at Iowa Health System Corporate office to add training for their staff. Schedule training for new managers on how to fill out and send their requisitions. Begin using for Minor Equipment Orders for Methodist West Hospital July Begin to use for all orders for Methodist West Hospital November We have begun to roll out to al users Jan 2010 Influence all key players to use the electronic signatures and accept as the new standard practices