Saving Time for Employees and Auditors at Pinellas County
By Caitlin Hines on July 3, 2018
Sure, you’ve likely watched CSI or NCIS but have you ever considered the true realities of what it is like to work in a Forensic Lab? Quality Assurance is a major component of these labs’ tasks and we are fortunate to help many of them, with our Quality Management Software.
Pinellas County Forensic Laboratory serves its over one million residents in Florida, while using Qualtrax as it’s compliance software solution. Jason Hodges is the Quality Manager and is responsible for compliance and audit prep for his lab. When reflecting on the decision to purchase Qualtrax he shared:
We chose Qualtrax because it looked much simpler than the document control system that we currently had in place. […] The options for document control and the simplicity with which you can change from version to version without doing all that stuff on paper was very attractive to us.
The value of Qualtrax began with document control but has extended into accreditation management. They undergo a full audit every four years and surveillance visits annually by ASCLD/LAB. Additionally, Pinellas County undergoes DNA external audits every two years and around a dozen internal audits every year. When you consider all the various audits Pinellas County must undergo it becomes clear that a streamlined solution is paramount, to create efficiencies surrounding audit prep and the day-of audit processes.
With Qualtrax in place, the realities of audits have transformed to become less cumbersome and more user-friendly for the staff of Pinellas County and auditors alike. “With Qualtrax, we have an easier way to show auditors where our documents are,” Jason commented. All auditors for Pinellas County are able to perform searches and locate necessary documentation easily, as opposed to the old process where auditors would be handed large binders to search through manually.
Jason shared that Pinellas County needed a system that would not only solve any document control issues, but which also supported process management through sign-offs on document revisions and training.
Due to their accreditation requirements, Pinellas County needed to be able to prove that employees have been trained on all revisions of all documents in their system. Before Qualtrax, they would have to hold meetings where every employee would sign-off that they understood these document changes. Now with Qualtrax, employees are able to take tests on those revisions independently, at a time that suits their schedule, saving them time in meetings and allowing their days to progress without interruption. Jason said he has even noticed that with the added tests on revisions that Qualtrax allows, employees better understand the changes that take place in the documents they are reading.
The number one way Qualtrax has simplified our organization is the document control process. It used to be a manual process with a lot of paper, a lot of chasing people around to have them sign things, and now with the Qualtrax software, it’s just a lot simpler to track the document changes and track that all the documents are going where they’re supposed to be and everybody is trained on them.
