Background

Jefferson Health is a leading non-profit, multi-state health system headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It currently operates 18 hospitals across Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey, which will increase with its merger with Lehigh Valley Health Network, expanding to 32 hospitals—making it the 15th largest non-profit academic health system in the U.S. Annually, Jefferson Health manages over 8.8 million hospital and outpatient visits. The system includes more than 50 outpatient and urgent care centers and has 10 Magnet®-designated hospitals. Jefferson Health is affiliated with Thomas Jefferson University, and its hospitals serve as teaching facilities for the university. The organization is also home to the NCI-designated Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of only 57 comprehensive cancer centers nationwide.

The Challenge

Over a decade ago, Jefferson Health digitized their rounding, PCRA, ICRA, ILSM, and later their fire drill and fire safety processes. They faced the common but cumbersome challenge of managing everything on paper—binders, sign-in sheets, observation forms, and manual work orders. While this traditional method had served its purpose in the past, it quickly became clear that the inefficiency of paper-based systems was creating unnecessary steps and slowing down vital processes.

Tony Van Dyke, Enterprise Director of Environmental Health & Safety, said:
“It used to be that a fire drill process had an observer in every unit who would fill out a form—the same as the observer form. They’d fill that out and fax it into our office. If there was a pile of papers on the floor in the morning from the fax machine, I knew there had been a fire drill. Then I was picking up 300 pages and putting them in the right order. That alone has been a huge time saver since we switched over.”

The frustration grew when regulatory surveys ignored the painstakingly compiled binders, highlighting how outdated the system had become. This sparked a desire for a modern, integrated solution where deficiencies identified during drills or rounding could automatically generate work orders—streamlining everything into a real-time, digital process. The push to leave behind the inefficiencies of the past and move into a smarter, more connected era ultimately led Jefferson Health to discover Soleran—thanks to a simple Google search.

Goals

Jefferson Health had a simple desire to take an innovative step forward for their large, complex organization. As the organization expanded from a three-hospital, one-university system to an eighteen-plus-hospital, two-university network, the need for standardization across facilities became increasingly critical—especially when it came to rounds, fire drills, and fire safety processes.

Leadership recognized that consistency was key to maintaining quality and compliance at scale. Previously, each location had its own version of forms—some outdated, some inconsistently used, and others even bearing old logos. This patchwork approach made it difficult to ensure uniformity, track compliance, and present a cohesive standard during surveys.

The goal was clear: whether a fire drill was happening at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Center City or at Abington Hospital in Abington, PA, the process, forms, and outcomes should look and function the same. Embracing this need for change laid the foundation for a streamlined, unified approach across the entire system.

Solution & Performance

Jefferson Health's adoption of Soleran's Rounding, Project Risk Manager, and Fire Safety Manager applications marked a transformative shift from outdated, paper-heavy processes to a streamlined digital solution that brought immediate and long-term value.

"Less paper in general - no more sorting papers or creating binders," explained Dyke. "Using Soleran for our process is simply second nature now. The staff that's coming on now have never done a paper version of our process."

The Soleran platform not only eliminated the need for physical paperwork but also introduced a centralized database where all fire drill records are stored, accessible, and standardized across the entire organization. For a growing system like Jefferson Health, this meant consistent documentation and compliance practices.