Q&A: Team huddles
Q: I would love to know if other programs are doing a team huddle. This is different than a formal staff meeting. We had daily team huddles during early COVID but have since discontinued them. We are hearing some staff would like them back. My questions are: if you have them, how often do you have them and on what day? Also, what do you include in the huddle for “need to know” and “nice to know”?
Response #1: We have a huddle once a week (except on the week of our monthly staff meeting) on Tuesday afternoon. There is a huddle board in Teams that people can put questions/concerns on. We request that things be put on the huddle board no later than Monday at 4 p.m. Every week we go over our month-to-date review rate and discuss staffing needs. We keep them very brief, usually 15–20 minutes.
Response #2: My organization experienced recent changes and integration, so there has been a lot of uncertainty. Once a week, my team will come together in the office and during that time, we have a “lunch and learn” for 1-hour every week on Thursdays. It’s a great way to catch up on both personal and professional updates. During this time the team will discuss new Coding Clinics with sample cases. I use this time to connect with staff individually to discuss any matter they want to share.
Response #3: Yes, we have a 30-minute huddle on Tuesday and Thursday every week in addition to a monthly one-hour team meeting and a monthly lunch and learn. We use huddles to disseminate real-time information on new things coming in, to discuss reminders on processes or things to get done, and to get back to the team on questions asked. We use team meetings for team-building, having fun (whilst learning), quarterly data sharing, and formal education sessions.
Response #4: We used to have a daily huddle, but now we have a huddle twice a week on Wednesday and Friday. The focus is team engagement and creating a small session environment to share information with the entire team. It is a required meeting with a set time (8:30 a.m.), but cameras are not required. However, the team is responsible for knowing anything that is covered during the meeting. This typically lasts anywhere from 10–30 minutes. Sometimes we cover process changes or hold mini education sessions/quiz questions. (We have separate longer education sessions.) Sometimes we ask what people are doing over the weekend, anyone they want to recognize, or if anyone wants to share anything.
For example, this upcoming Friday we are having everyone wear pink so we can take a “photo” together to submit to our facility for breast cancer awareness. We also bring in speakers (e.g., HR, someone to talk about benefits or retirement); we share things like open enrollment, our wellness program and how to access it, etc. We don’t go over things like metrics; we save that for other meetings such as a task force or HIM department meeting.
Response #5: Our team has weekly huddles on the first, fourth, and (if applicable) fifth Thursday of the month. The second Thursday of the month is our longer monthly staff meeting. The third week of the month is a no-meeting-zone week to provide more time for the CDI specialists to play catchup because of a longer meeting the week prior. Our huddles are scheduled for an hour on everyone’s calendars, but typically we keep them to 30 minutes.
We start with an open session for the team to share wins from the week prior and to articulate needs that we can help with. I then provide leadership updates, our educator provides short education, and then we have time for any other ad hoc agenda items that the team brings forward. We have our CDI specialists rotate as facilitators for each huddle. They call for the ad hoc agenda items at the beginning of the week, send out any updated agenda if there are additions, and then facilitate the meeting on that day. I facilitate the longer monthly staff meeting occurring on the second Thursday of each month.
Response #6: In response to your question regarding huddles, we have an entirely remote team, so we have incorporated daily huddles to keep us all connected. We feel this process cuts down on the calls and emails. This also provides a way for the individual specialist to share issues of certain provider behaviors and to see if others are having the same issues. We have the team calls every morning at 9 a.m., where we share the day before as well as the overall productivity and query rate. We typically will ask for three good things to be shared with the group. It can be personal or work-centered. We try to keep calls short for the most part. Most calls are five minutes, but if issues are brought up, they can go up to 15–20 minutes. If a workflow is updated from our discussion, we will follow up with an email to the group.
Response #7: We do a huddle once a week (Thursdays from 9–9:30). It is virtual, we use Teams, and we do require cameras on for this huddle. I always have an updates section and a general reminders section. Updates always include upcoming educational opportunities and webinars, a shoutout to any CDI specialists who won a clinical validation appeal, and any other current/new projects that are going on that I want the team to be aware of or discuss.
We end with any pictures that the team might have submitted and an open forum for any questions. Some huddles take the full 30 minutes, some go beyond, and some are a little shorter, depending on questions and planned content. Once a month I present the monthly team metrics by including our dashboards in the huddle, and once every other month we have a CDI guest presenter on a clinical topic (e.g., this month we are doing shock).
Response #8: Our organization strongly encourages team huddles with flexibility to decide on the frequency by the leader and a focus on four main pillars: involvement, communication, celebration, and check-ins. This has been a great opportunity to update the team in person. We are a hybrid team with staff on-site in a rotating scheduling model. However, everyone is on-site together one day a week. The organization sends out a leader list email every Monday highlighting important topics to share. I usually start by acknowledging a staff member for a job well done, a birthday if there is one (etc.), then focus on the leader list; then we go over any topics that have been brought to me for clarification since the last huddle. I try to keep a running log of topics as I prepare for the huddle throughout the week. I also refer back to huddle meetings when preparing for our monthly staff meeting. Meeting minutes are then sent out after the huddle as a reference.
Editor’s note: This question was answered by members of the ACDIS CDI Leadership Council. For the purposes of this article, all Council member answers have been deidentified.