The fall is finally here, which means the TEHA annual education conference is right around the corner. At Hedgerow Software, we’re looking forward to another great event as an attendee, exhibitor, and sponsor. Last year was enlightening and we look forward to making more agency friends next week. Visit with us onsite or our happy hour activity Wednesday and we’ll introduce you to the City of Mesquite, Texas. We recently spoke with Mesquite about how they leverage EHS technology to more efficiently manage their environmental health programs and we wanted to share their story in advance of TEHA.
About City of Mesquite Texas
The City of Mesquite is known as the “Rodeo Capital of Texas” and is located in northern Texas, within a suburban area of Dallas County. Mesquite recently annexed parts of nearby Kaufman County, adding many new citizens for the environmental health team to manage. The City of Mesquite has a population of over 150,000 citizens and 600+ food establishments. Mesquite watches over a broad spectrum of programs including food and beverage, mobile food, mosquito control, swimming pools, day cares, foster homes, schools, cafeterias, liquid waste, and temporary/seasonal events.
Environmental Health Challenge
A number of years ago, The City of Mesquite’s IT team built a home grown legacy system to manage their environmental health data collection and inspections. Much was still done offline with physical printing of inspections and entering data into multiple systems to manage each program. While the system worked initially, as the city grew in population and program complexity, it became increasingly difficult to manage environmental health programs in the legacy system. This led to a search for a new technology provider that was specialized in environmental health and could help improve the efficiency of field inspectors, front and back office staff, and managers of the team as the city continued to grow and Kaufman County was added to the team’s responsibilities.
EHS Solution
After conducting a thorough evaluation of technology providers, City of Mesquite selected Hedgerow Software for their new EHS technology solution. Mesquite is able to secure a single source of truth system in the Hedgehog Application Suite that is purpose-built for environmental health with powerful out-of-the-box-capability—all critical requirements for the EH team. The technology also has the ability for inspector configuration of workflows, dashboards, layouts and views. Each inspector works differently and wants the ability to personalize the system for their unique needs, without the need for a costly customization project post implementation.
Better agency document management was also a crucial requirement addressed within Hedgehog. Mesquite now is able to attach inspection reports, pictures, and other agency documents for facilities and business operators, which enables inspectors to be more organized, go paperless and remove the physical printers in their cars previously used for onsite inspection reports.
Lastly, Hedgehog’s Management Center helped better link facilities with food manager certifications, while back office staff were now able to generate accounts payable invoices, batches, renewals, and new permits all from a single system.
This new solution enabled Mesquite to gain hours of efficiency each week for inspectors and office staff, which was paramount to manage county growth, as they could serve more citizens with the existing team.
In their own words
“Hedgerow Software allows us to access all environmental health information in one system with the ability to configure inspector workflows, layouts and views, all out-of-the-box. Being able to better manage agency and operator documents like inspection reports, pictures, and permits has been a significant time-saver.”
- Kellye Karpinski, Sr. Health Specialist, City of Mesquite
“The Hedgerow support staff and development team listened to our needs, learned about our programs, and the software was an ideal fit for our environmental health use cases. The entire process was very organized.”
- Barry Jenkins, Health Official for the City of Mesquite
We can’t wait to see you all next week at the AEC in Round Rock. Make sure to schedule some time with us in advance and join our happy hour on Wednesday evening before the fun TEHA social event. RSVP with Adam Souza below, as space is limited: TEHA HAPPY HOUR RSVP FORM
