Tomah VA team awarded National HeRO Award

The Tomah VA Biomedical Engineering team was recently awarded the National HeRO Award, the highest level of High Reliability Organization recognition available within VA.

Jeff Wills, Jason Ray (pictured above) and Ethan Urban were selected as winners in the Non-Clinical Team.

While completing the annual preventative maintenance, the team identified issues with the emergency stop functionality of the patient ceiling lifts. The main concern was that the emergency stop did not result in an actual stop of the movement of the lift and allowed continual descent at an accelerated rate—and the potential to cause the patient or employee harm if staff were not prepared or expecting the lift to continue to lower. All power was expected to be removed from the lift once the emergency stop was engaged.

Made video of what they were seeing

The team decided to take a video of what they were seeing to share it with others. The testing information and video were shared with Safe Patient Handling and Mobility, local leadership and the ceiling lift company.

The question Tomah asked is Why, when testing one lift, does the weight stay stationary but drifts when tested again? The team reviewed the lift manual.

Different from the manual

Using the same lift, the same weight, and testing in the same way, the team achieved different results than what the manual indicated would occur.

The Biomedical team, after identifying the potential risk of injury to Veterans and employees with the patient ceiling lifts, provided an increased awareness of the emergency stop vulnerability.

The impacted lifts were removed from service at Tomah to prevent potential patient or employee harm. Portable lifting devices will be utilized to meet Veteran lifting needs until the affected ceiling lifts can be repaired or replaced.

The HeRO award recognizes staff members who help advance VA’s Journey to High Reliability through the demonstration of HRO Principles in action.