As part of our agency transformation effort, we’ve been working hard on identifying and measuring what matters in our agency so we can move towards improvement in every area. We have one of broadest missions of any agency. Just tracking all the various programs and ways we work towards our mission is an incredible task.
Public Health Licensing has developed a couple of metrics that we are highlighting on our agency scorecard, which rolls up to the Governor’s office. One reason why we picked licensing is because of the unique position in our agency mission. While licensing must provide good customer service for our licensees by processing license applications quickly, we also provide a serious public safety and protection role by making sure our licensees are following critical health and safety regulations. With more than 14,000 licensed entities and professionals, the job is a big one.
In deciding what matters, licensing is focusing on two critical areas: 1) how long it takes to process an application for licensure; and 2) how long it takes to respond to complaints at licensed facilities. In both cases, we adopted an aggressive goal of cutting these timeframes in half by the end of the year.
How are we going to accomplish this big goal? We asked a team of people to identify procedure improvements in processing applications. By walking through the entire lifespan of an application, the team identified some easy improvements that our customers will love while reducing work by our staff. The next step is putting those improvements into practice, seeing if they work, and continuing to seek better ways to do business. The same strategy is being used to cut our response time to complaints, something the public counts on ADHS to resolve as quickly as possible to make sure people are safe and getting good care.
Are we sure all the changes we make will get us to our goal? That’s what we are striving to do, but the important thing is to keep improving, to keep identifying areas where we can use our resources better and measuring the results until we meet or exceed our targets.
