NAVEX > Case Studies > Fostering Community Through Hotline Management at Guthrie

Fostering Community Through Hotline Management at Guthrie

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

NAVEX E&C™ Incident Management
EthicsPoint® INCIDENT MANAGEMENT
Whistleblower Hotline Intake
Awareness Solutions

Tech Stack

Hotline Management System
Incident Management Software

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Employee Satisfaction

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Healthcare & Hospitals

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Human Resources

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Guthrie is a non-profit, multi-specialty integrated health system that has been in operation for over 120 years. The organization serves a large geographic area spanning Pennsylvania and New York states. With nearly 6,000 employees, Guthrie operates five hospitals – its largest being Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital – and a number of smaller clinics. Among Guthrie’s goals are to provide patient care, “within an environment of compassion, learning and discovery.” As one example of how that care philosophy extends to Guthrie’s ethics and compliance efforts, 20 years after starting as a respiratory therapist at Guthrie, Roger Lathrop transitioned to a compliance officer role and today serves as the organization’s senior director for internal audit and compliance.

The Challenge

Guthrie, a non-profit, multi-specialty integrated health system serving Pennsylvania and New York states, needed a way to effectively collect, assess, and act on feedback from its stakeholders. The organization wanted to ensure it was providing an environment where stakeholders, both internal and external, felt comfortable expressing their concerns. The challenge was to maintain the legacy of the organization in the pursuit of patient care while also ensuring that stakeholders felt heard and that their feedback was being acted upon.

The Solution

Guthrie leveraged the capabilities of NAVEX E&C Incident Management to foster strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders. The system provided an easy-to-use vehicle for reporting potential issues and making inquiries in the manner the user prefers. These reports directly informed communication to the organization’s board of directors and others about the health and nature of those relationships. This open flow of information was critical to ensuring Guthrie was delivering on high standards of patient care. The success of Guthrie’s hotline and incident management program began with cultivating a strong awareness that the program exists. The hotline contact information was placed everywhere, including on handsets, base sets, training slides, and on the landing page of every website within Guthrie's set of websites, both internal and external.

Operational Impact

The ability to report hotline trends to Guthrie’s board at a high level, including from contributors outside the organization, is a critical measure of their success in serving employees and stakeholders.
The hotline facilitated solving problems, such as ensuring a person got their prescriptions.
The hotline program played a role in the due diligence around a recent acquisition. The entity under evaluation used a spreadsheet-based program for incident management and an internal phone number that may not have inspired much confidence in its ability to accommodate anonymous reporting. That entity previously received only a handful of reports a year, but saw an increase of reports after Guthrie transitioned their program to NAVEX E&C.
Guthrie regularly provides anonymized “learning letters” through its internal management portal, using real-life incident data that may have started from NAVEX E&C’s hotline structure as a mechanism for periodic training.

Quantitative Benefit

Guthrie’s program receives around 100 to 125 reports each year, around half via phone and about 35 percent being anonymous.
The entity under evaluation saw an increase in reports after Guthrie transitioned their program to NAVEX E&C.