Tsuchiya for Care: Portal Site Created by Risk Management Committee 　~Toward Risk Avoidance in the Nursing Care Industry

Tsuchiya Corporation (Head office: Ibara City, Okayama Prefecture; Representative Director: Toshiyuki Takahama; Number of employees: 2,646), a social business enterprise that provides home-visit nursing care services for people with severe disabilities throughout Japan, as well as daycare services, regular patrols, and home nursing care for the elderly, created a portal site in January 2025 to prevent serious accidents in nursing care. In January 2025, the Risk Management Committee created a "portal site" in order to avoid serious accidents in nursing care.

The "Portal Site" is a dedicated site for the Committee and covers the Company's risk management efforts. The Portal Site collects various measures to avoid risks at nursing care facilities, including the collection of near-miss cases to avoid serious accidents, the development of emergency flowcharts, and an industry-academia collaborative project in cooperation with the Health and Welfare Management Laboratory of the Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University.

We intend to update the "portal site" as needed and make maximum use of it to avoid risks not only within our company but also in the nursing care industry as a whole.

Risk Management Committee Portal Site

■Outline of the Portal Site

The portal site is a site where all information on risk management of the Tsuchiya Group can be collected and checked, classified into 8 categories, and is operated, verified, and analyzed by Yuka Sawada, Chairperson of the Committee, and Arima Watanabe, Vice Chairperson of the Committee, by collecting information from each Tsuchiya Group office as needed.

The information on the portal site will contribute to risk mitigation within the Tsuchiya Group, and as a leading nursing care company, we intend to help the nursing care industry as a whole to avoid risks.

Contents of the portal site

(1) About the Risk Management Committee

z Purpose of the Committee's activities, future policies, etc.

z "Reporting Form using Google Forms" (hereinafter referred to as "G-Form") for prompt reporting of accident cases to the Committee.

In the event of a serious accident, this form is set up so that the Committee can immediately identify and manage the details of the accident.

(2) Near-misses and accidents (for on-site staff and managers)

z Once a month, Hiyari-Hatto/Incident reports are collected from each Tsuchiya Group office (including subsidiaries) via G-Form.

On August 1, 2024, the reporting method was revised to separate "Hiyari-Hatto" and "Accident" and to review the definitions of both.

The reporting method for near-misses and accidents is divided into two forms: G-Form, in which the on-site staff report to their superiors, and G-Form, in which the superiors report to the committee.

z Confirmation using a spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is set up to manage near-misses and accidents, and the contents and number of incidents are monitored.

(3) Storage of accident reports

In creating this portal site, the Committee has decided to manage accident reports in one place.

(4) Five articles for monitoring

Home-visit care for persons with severe illnesses includes "watching over" as part of the support services, but accidents may occur due to "falling asleep," especially during the nighttime hours. Although we have not experienced any major problems at this point in time, it is just a "coincidence that it has not happened so far." Therefore, we have created the "Five Articles for Watching Over" that stipulate the rules to be followed during watchful waiting.

(5) Emergency Book

This book contains contact information for our clients in the event of an emergency, how to respond, and information on the client's history and allergies. We keep a copy of this book at each client's home and also keep a copy at each office so that we can respond promptly in the event of an emergency.

(6) Emergency Flowchart

A flowchart that clearly outlines the procedures to be taken by each office in the event of an emergency.

(7) Industry-University Collaboration Project

In collaboration with our advisor, Yumi Matsubara, Professor of Health and Welfare Management, Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, and Akira Kayasaki of the same laboratory, we are conducting KYT (hazard prediction training) as part of research aimed at accident prevention. We intend to disseminate the results of this project outside the company in the future.

(8) Hearings on cases requiring investigation

From the reports of near-misses and accidents at each business site, the Committee members pick up cases that require further investigation, and conduct interviews with the managers of the sites.

The Committee members follow up on these cases, focusing on those that could have developed into major accidents in some cases, or those that have not taken adequate measures to prevent recurrence, after discussing them with the managers to prevent similar problems from occurring. To date, we have conducted interviews in two cases.

Comment from Yuka Sawada, Chairperson of the Risk Management Committee

Risk Management Committee Chairperson, Yuka Sawada

In creating this portal site, our first priority was to enable on-site staff and managers to report near-misses and accidents smoothly. Since on-site staff must collect, consolidate, create, and report information while performing their daily duties, we focused on "ease of use" and "ease of reporting and confirmation.

Of course, there had been a reporting system in the past, but many staff members were reluctant to report near-misses, and it had not taken root in our company as part of our "culture" to create and report every time a near-miss occurred. In order to eliminate such resistance, we started from the very beginning, little by little, to formulate a system, and through the Omamori Book, the 5 Articles of Mamori, and study sessions, we finally feel that we have come this far.

The portal site has been created so that all kinds of near-misses and accident reports that occurred in the Tsuchiya Group can be viewed. This leads to transparency of the company, and above all, I think the most important thing is that the entire Tsuchiya Group can "access" various matters. We consider this portal site to be an asset to our company, as it will help prevent accidents from occurring in the first place.

In the future, the main purpose of the site will be to "create preventive measures" to avoid similar accidents before they happen. Even a near-miss incident can lead to a major accident, and in the worst case, it can be fatal or lead to compensation issues. In order to avoid such incidents and to ensure that users and staff can live and work with peace of mind, we will continue to brush up our portal site as needed.

Hiyari-Hatto is an important key to preventing accidents from occurring in the first place, and reporting Hiyari-Hatto is not something to be punished for, but rather something to be appreciated. The Committee will continue to raise the psychological safety of staff by making them aware of such incidents, and at the same time, we will strive to enhance transparency within the company through information disclosure and raise awareness of risk management throughout the Tsuchiya Group.

Comments by Arima Watanabe, Vice Chairperson of the Risk Management Committee

Vice Chairman of the Risk Management Committee, Arima Watanabe

I would like to introduce the major reasons for the creation of this portal site. First of all, it is necessary to clarify what kind of activities are actually carried out by the Committee and what kind of rules exist in the Committee, which is one of the key factors for the members of the Committee to disseminate information about the Committee. Furthermore, it is essential that the members of the Committee have a common understanding and communicate and disseminate the same direction to all concerned parties, and we thought that by improving the groundwork, this would in turn promote operational efficiency. In addition, the information on all kinds of mechanisms, data, and systems that the Committee has created so far is scattered around, and there is a very high possibility that the information will get "lost," so to speak, and the time and cost will have to be spent from the entrance to search for information. This was a major point of improvement for the Committee. In recent years, the administrative tasks have become much more complex than they were when I was administrator. On the other hand, this can also be said to be an increase in risk awareness. In these times, I thought it was necessary to take measures to reduce the time and cost of each operation as much as possible, which led to the creation of the portal site.

The creation of this site has also brought us another benefit. There is a lot of room for improvement in the efficiency of our operations, including those of our subsidiaries. Even when looking at a single near-miss or accident report, there are still many departments that make full use of analog methods and fail to improve operational efficiency. I cannot say that it is desirable for everything to be digitalized, but I believe that improving workload and operational efficiency will definitely help to hedge risks. We will carry out "what we can do now" to become a company where all employees can say that we are a good company to work for.

Related URL

<Official website

https://tcy.co.jp/

<Official X (former Twitter)

https://x.com/tcy_honsha

＜Official YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCboj8uAyr_W7Vw4kT9HS7ng

Company Profile

Company name: Tsuchiya Corporation

Location ：2F Hisayasu Central Building, 192-2 Ibara-cho, Ibara-shi, Okayama

Representative Director: Toshiyuki Takahama

Establishment ：August 2020

Business description : Disability welfare service business and community life support business,

　　　　　　In-home service business based on the Long-Term Care Insurance Law,

　　　　　　Planning, holding, and operation of lectures and workshops, and training business,

　　　　　　Home-visit nursing business