Field Visit Yields Best Practices

John Lipp, Operations Director, made visits to the SCA locations last month. He discovered great insights into how different locations have developed and implemented procedures that are both improving their operations and making internal processes more efficient. The next series of blog postings will share some of those ‘best practices’ with the Western Region.

The intent of sharing these ideas is to allow you to pick and choose those that are appropriate for your operation. If you have questions, please give the location a call and discuss it with them.
The first post will occur tomorrow.

CAMPA Regional Meeting

The next regional meeting is on September 26th in Sacramento, from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. This is a one day meeting.

You should plan on getting your plane tickets as soon as possible to lock in the summer sale rates.

The meeting will cover HR issues, sales strategies, operational issues and possibly some additional training.

List Compilation Project Starts

As discussed in our Brainstorming Conference Call on July 2nd, we will undertake a project to compile a list of all of the clients served by AccuDiagnostics franchisees nationally.

Nicole Thelin will be coordinating this project. The following email will be sent in the next few weeks to all franchisees with a follow up call to ask for their client list. When Nicole calls you, please be prepared to provide this list to her.

I expect that is project will take six months to get to the 90% level but we will keep at it. After the initial list is compiled, Nicole will follow up with a bi-monthly call to gather updates to the list. Again, you should be prepared to provide an update to her.

Blog Schedule Change

As of Monday, July 13th, the CAMPA Today blog will only be updated on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. This change reflects opinions gathered from several franchisees who believe that a MWF schedule is more convenient, effective, and easier to use than the previous MTTF schedule.

Partnering on Grants

Jolene Benner, our Special Projects Coordinator who is working on grants for drug testing, has found the perfect non-profit partner. She has provided some basic information about our new “partner”.

The following is a portion of a statement from the manager of the program:

“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Success Through Awareness & Resistance (STAR) Unit provides drug, gang, and violence prevention education to students throughout Los Angeles County. It is a collaborative effort between the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, educators, students, parents, and the community to offer an educational program in the classroom to prevent or reduce the use of “gateway” drugs (alcohol, tobacco and marijuana) and violence among our students. The deputies assigned to the STAR Unit work with 246 schools in 36 school districts, teaching over 52,000 students on a monthly basis. The STAR Unit receives funding from three major sources: contract cities and schools, grants, and Asset Forfeiture. It is vital to the STAR Unit to provide excellent customer service and client satisfaction to our cities and schools in order to continue our programs, keep deputies in the classrooms, and maintain our involvement in bringing the schools and communities together.”

Everyone knows the economical problems are causing a lack of funding in most school districts in California. Because of that lack of funding, the STAR program has been pulled from the Lancaster/Palmdale area and the head of the program was thrilled to have a chance to partner with us because of that fact.

Also, Jolene first approached the Lancaster School District because they had announced budget cuts. Having been a librarian at one time, she knew the funding for new materials for the school libraries would be pulled. The head of the district in Lancaster acknowledged that fact However, when she presented the idea of partnering with the District Librarian to provide books for the schools with the theme of drug/alcohol prevention, they said no. They knew that layoffs for teachers were on the horizon so they felt it would be inappropriate to attempt funding of any kind for the libraries under those circumstances.

However, the head of the STAR program was very enthusiastic about incorporating books to be given to the schools through their program. So the grant money, if awarded, would have a certain percentage going to the STAR program, a certain percentage going to the purchase of books for the district and a certain percentage going to Accu to hold an Open House event for the community.

Jolene is in the process of working out all the details and starting the actual writing of the proposal template. All the Accu locations are in an area where a STAR (or similar) program works with the schools. Because of this, a type of template will work for each location.

This is a slow process, but when done correctly, can result in a grant award which would be beneficial to schools, children and Accu locations. Jolene will keep everyone posted on the progress.

SEO Team Stays a Head of Curve

The AccuDiagnostics SEO Team is constantly researching and studying the latest search techniques because the world of SEO is constantly changing. What worked a week ago does not necessary work today and definitely will not be current next week.

Bing is the new up and coming search engine from Microsoft, and they are quickly gaining recognition and popularity. Google is estimated to lose some customer loyalties because of Bing, and Bing has already outpaced Yahoo! So this means it is important for our business listings to be correct.

You can start by using Bing (http://www.bing.com/) and searching for yourself.

See if your business has a listing, and if the information Bing has gathered is correct. This information includes your website, etc.

Then you can manually add your business listing here, whether it is correct or not. You will be prompted to create an account.

https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx

Lancaster - Best Practices

During a recent visit to the Lancaster location, John Lipp identified several best practices. Gloria Alcivar, the Lancaster location Lab Tech, has developed some excellent documentation and procedures including:

1. DrugPak documentation on using DrugPak with DOT customers
2. Pulling “randoms”
3. Operating a consortium
4. Making a copy of the actual urine dip stick for documenting historical accuracy
5. Keeping a Lab Log of all specimens sent to a lab for conformation testing

To learn more about these and other procedures, give Gloria a call. She will be glad to share with you the “what’s and why’s” of these best practices.