Fast-growing primary healthcare provider embraces Logiqc and empowers staff

Established in 2014 as an independent not-for-profit company, Black Swan Health Ltd is a Perth-based provider of primary healthcare and mental health services. Following changes in funding and service delivery models for primary healthcare in 2015, it acquired several long-established service delivery programs. It operates clinics in Joondalup, Osborne Park, Fremantle, Midland and Cockburn.

Kerry Fryers joined Black Swan Health in February 2020 as Clinical Governance, Compliance and Quality Manager. The organisation rolled out LogiqcQMS in July 2020.

The search for a fully functional, cost-effective QMS

Over the past five years, we’ve continued to grow our service range, which ultimately led us to a decision about our systems and processes. When a business grows at great speed, sometimes systems  can’t keep up. Or people accept the system they have as being ’normal’.

We had a system for feedback, incidents and risk management but it didn’t do certain things—or if it did, we couldn’t get the right support or training. And I found that I would need another full-time employee just to do the manual reporting.

We also had limited licences due to cost, which meant that our managers weren’t able to manage the system—we [the quality team] did it for them. So they couldn’t see where an incident was at, for example. We can’t hold managers accountable if they can’t see the information—it’s not fair – plus, they wanted to be more involved.

Why choose LogiqcQMS?

We looked at a number of systems. I had an aged-care background where there are lots of fabulous systems, but they are not directly transferable to primary health care. My quality officer had used LogiqcQMS and when I looked at their website I thought, wow.

I met with the Logiqc team and talked through what we needed it to do, and the things I thought it was not built for; for example, we get a lot of requests for access to information from coroners, from the courts, and we needed a system to track that. They easily showed us how to use the feedback register for that, and it works a treat.

And when we asked to speak with other users of the system, Logiqc’s response was really warm, and they encouraged and facilitated this.

The selling point for us was that there didn’t seem to be any experience that LogiqcQMS couldn’t do, and modifications could be made where needed.” We’ve got four accreditation processes which are all catered for in Logiqc. Accountability and pathways are really visible, and all the registers are integrated.

I saw it as a way to empower our people and get the most effective and efficient outcomes.

Implementing LogiqcQMS

With the contract for our old system due to lapse in June, an opportunity presented itself. So, having come on board in February, I asked in March if we could have a new system in place by 1 July. That began a stressful period.

It was extremely beneficial for us to have someone from Logiqc pull us back; to say, you’re doing too much by 1 July, or you’re not doing it in the right order, or do it right the first time.

They encouraged us to build the system on our experiences, so our incident categories are based on evidence reported over two years. The system also offers a range of defaults that are really relevant for us, and we kept them too; they gave us ideas. So we got the packet cake mix and the icing.

Staff training sessions were 30 minutes, short, sweet and snappy, delivered over Zoom, which was fantastic, and also recorded. We have people whose first language is not English, so we thought we might need multiple approaches to training, but in fact we didn’t. And the trainer made it easy for people, so they’re not fearful to use the system.

We closed our old system out on 30 June and went live with Logiqc feedback and incident registers on 1 July. Other modules will go live on 1 September, but we couldn’t have a gap for those two registers.

The project management process and support you get from Logiqc is not ‘set and forget’; it continues through the first year. And we’ve had phenomenal, super quick support from the help desk.

Staff feel more empowered

People have settled into the change really well and [2 months after going live] it already feels like we’ve been using LogiqcQMS forever. I think that’s because it’s really easy to use.

I get feedback from people entering an incident for the first time, and they say it’s really intuitive, really simple to use. And they can go back in and see what happened to it. They can see that they’ve been heard, that things have moved to a managed phase, an action phase; there’s evidence.

Staff feel more connected and empowered. They are using the system with confidence because it is set up to make sense.