The Hedgerow team was able to chat with environmental health leader Stevan Walker from the City of Lubbock Texas. Stevan recently won the I.E. Scott award at TEHA’s AEC for superior achievement and attainment of the highest standards in the environmental health profession. We were fortunate to spend time with Stevan during the conference and onsite at his agency after the event. Lubbock has utilized Hedgerow Software technology for the last few years, and we wanted to check in with him regarding the benefits they are seeing, especially as we settle into a new normal after the pandemic.
Stevan, tell us about how things have changed at your environmental health agency, City of Lubbock, since the pandemic.
We never stopped doing inspections during the pandemic. They slowed down a bit and we did start doing them virtually. In fact, your EHS technology at Hedgerow was very helpful for our team during that phase, which we’ll get into later. Lubbock continues to grow and has had many new facilities open since the pandemic. We’ve pretty much made it back to normal pre-pandemic 2021 levels.
Some agencies have seen COVID funding dry up. Has that impacted you?
The pandemic did help get us additional funds that we used for staffing and technology. Some of our newest staff was brought on through grants awarded to the city. We've still got COVID funds from last fiscal year and we'll see about 2024.
Business really seems to be booming in states like Texas and Arizona with a surplus of new citizens moving into the states. Has that been your experience?
It's a big, big, big increase. Our total inspections per year have gone up 15x versus what they used to be and we now look after over 2,200 food establishments, 320 recreational water facilities and another 700 plus permitted facilities. Business is good.
I would assume that's where technology helps your team become more efficient?
Absolutely, better data management, inspection workflows, and reporting capabilities have enabled us to do many things that were not possible before. Especially as we manage a growing number of facilities each year. We love being able to easily track facilities with inspection reports, notes, and document/picture attachments that we put into the system. It’s so much more efficient.
Has better data management and reporting helped you justify more budget for the team?
Yes, it has. For example, we participate in FDA’s Voluntary Standards Program which has a self-assessment and verification audit process. We've tagged inspection and facility information in Hedgehog which helps us perform the audit more easily. It’s really convenient for us to generate the right reports in a few seconds.
Are there any other general benefits of using EHS technology?
Absolutely, I can think of three examples. First, we had an oyster recall in Texas last year and technology was extremely helpful for us. In the old days we would have had to go through a legacy system and filing cabinets to find -- what was hopefully -- correct business information. Then we’d need to call every related facility to see if they serve fresh oysters and take notes before the inspection. With technology, we can build reports on facilities quickly with much higher accuracy and then cleanly track all of the data in one location for easy access later.
Second, my team can now resolve certain violations without having to travel back to the facility. For veterinary inspections that didn’t have updated shots for pet vaccines. Or a restaurant didn't have a thermometer in the refrigerator and they email us a photo that we attach to the inspection report to resolve the violation right away. Those small things add up to a lot of time savings each day for my team.
Lastly, my team really likes the online disclosure portal. We used to have citizens submit open records requests to get inspection reports and we’d have to make sure the person was authorized to be able to get information. That was a time-consuming process. Since it's a public disclosure on the website now, it’s much more transparent and it keeps us in line with FDA standards. Rebecca, an inspector on my team, has a great quote: “We're kind of like invisible workers behind the scenes. Hedgehog makes us more visible to the public.”
Let’s talk about the technology implementation process. Any lessons learned or tips for other agencies?
I was pretty skeptical that we could have EHS technology up and running in less than six months, but it was true! Selecting the right technology partner is so crucial for success. In addition, understanding the level of training and support you’ll receive, what it takes to make updates to workflows and reports in the product, which Hedgerow does well by the way, was also important to us.
Glad to hear it! Were there any other gotchas or tips?
The last thing I’ll talk about is data migration. I’m not an IT manager but deciding which data you want to migrate into the new system is also critical. We brought over quite a bit of information from a legacy system, and in hindsight, I would have just started with a clean data set. We really didn’t need everything we thought we would in the new system.
Thank you Stevan for sharing what you’ve been up to at the City of Lubbock. I’m glad Hedgehog has helped your team and have a great 2024!
To read additional environmental health agency interviews, please visit our blog or connect with me on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.
