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"Steton's software gives us a consistent application of our regulations statewide."

--James Antoon
Chief of Sanitarian Services for the State of Louisiana

State and other local health departments are vital to ensuring the public's health and safety. In today's world, the demands and responsibilities placed upon health departments are surging to new levels. To ensure these demands are met, the State of Louisiana's health department took a proactive look at how they could improve the efficiency of their sanitarian services.

Louisiana has programs ranging from the regulation of oyster growing waters, restaurants, markets, schools, day care centers, hospitals, nursing homes, to the regulation of individual sewage disposal. Louisiana knew they could benefit from technology advancements designed to help standardize and better manage diverse programs.

The Challenge: No Consistency

Sanitarian Services is the division within the State of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals that is responsible for the overall public health in the state. A huge responsibility, yet all inspections were being conducted using paper and pencil with a carbon copy left behind. It was basically the same way that inspections had been performed since the inception of government inspections.

You could say it worked; however, it had many deficiencies. James Antoon, Chief of Sanitarian Services for the State of Louisiana, stated, “There was no consistency. No consistency in inspection reports and no consistency from sanitarian to sanitarian. In addition, reports were often illegible due to poor handwriting by sanitarians, and the carbon didn't always give you a good copy."

“The biggest, single complaint that our department was receiving was that we had inconsistencies in violations. We essentially had problems statewide in monitoring a standardized method for sanitarians to perform inspections."

The Discovery: Proven Solution

The State of Louisiana was introduced to a technology that was being utilized by one of the world's top third-party inspection and auditing firms. That technology was Steton Quality Suite developed by Steton. Louisiana contacted Steton and began investigating the advantages that could be gained by automating their state health inspection processes.

According to Antoon, “We initiated the release of an RFP for inspection management software, and we received a significant number of choices. We thought that Steton had more experience in the food auditing business than anyone else. There were some environmental software programs out there, but their software development didn't seem as advanced in monitoring food as Steton's software."

The Solution: Consistency & Efficiency

Still in just the early stages of implementation, Steton's software is already producing huge rewards for the State of Louisiana. Antoon stated, “What Steton's software has done for us, more than anything else, is help us manage our entire inspection process. It has given us consistency among our sanitarians throughout the state. It is just a good management tool to see what violations are being detected, how long our sanitarians are in there, and the frequency of inspections. The software provides the whole package to improve our management capabilities."

“Steton's software gives us a consistent application of our regulations statewide, rather than just a hodge-podge of different procedures throughout the state as we had before."

“As inspectors are becoming proficient in using the software, inspections are getting much faster. It expedites the training process and ensures standardization. We can assess the skills of our standardization officers that train our inspectors much more easily."

The State of Louisiana selected tablet PCs as the mobile computing devices for their sanitarians to use. As soon as the sanitarians log their mobile computers into SQS, inspection results are automatically uploaded. Antoon stated, “The inspection results are automatically uploaded from our tablet PCs and we can immediately pull up the results and look at it."

Louisiana also utilizes some of the advanced capabilities of Steton's software, such as loading digital pictures taken at an inspection into the software and saving them with the associated inspection. This makes verifying that corrective actions have taken place much easier. In addition, sanitarians are able to plug in a convenient, portable printer and leave behind a copy of inspection results and/or temporary permits immediately after an inspection.

After just a few months of implementation, the State of Louisiana is performing 5,000 - 7,000 inspections a month utilizing Steton's software. As more programs within the state implement the software, the amount of automated inspections will continue to increase.

The Future: Public Notification

Soon the State of Louisiana will expand the use of data collected using Steton's software to enable the citizens of Louisiana to view violations, via the internet, that have been incurred by individual establishments. In addition, greater permitting flexibility will be engaged and more programs throughout the state will begin implementing Steton's software solution.

More on Steton: Empowering Organizations

Established in 1996, Steton is the leading provider of mobile data collection and reporting software for quality and safety professionals responsible for public health and consumer safety. Steton empowers organizations to avoid loss and increase compliance through improved data accuracy, corrective action management, and real-time reporting.

A snapshot of Steton's clients include the top three quick-service restaurants in the world, the world's number one retailer, leading food processors, the global leader in contract food service, the world's largest hotel chain, leading third-party auditors and labs, government agencies, airlines, correctional facilities, and the list goes on. These prominent organizations have turned to Steton to help protect their most valuable assets — people, products, and brands. Steton's rapidly expanding list of clients across multiple industries has made Steton's software the technology standard for quality and safety professionals.