One of the best parts of my job is meeting with healthcare leaders from across the country and hearing about their organization’s cultural transformation as well as their own personal transformations as leaders in a lean environment. I recently had the opportunity to spend time with Keith Knoll, President at Wellspan’s York Hospital. It was awesome to go-and-see at York Hospital and hear Keith candidly share about the cultural change that is occurring there. Continue reading →
Many healthcare executives are interested in building innovation capability in their organizations. Oftentimes this interest manifests as a stated objective in the enterprise strategic plan to “do innovation” and some lucky (or unlucky) soul is pulled aside and asked to add the initiative to their existing, long list of responsibilities. They end up stuck with the mandate – “go forth and innovate!” Continue reading →
It’s not uncommon to hear statements like “I think this will help us achieve that target,” or “I hope this change in process will get us to where we need to be” from operations managers when it comes to new goals or targets being defined for the year. But hope is not a strategy, and a wish is not a plan. It is necessary for organizations to create a plan to ensure that the improvement work they are doing will impact their True North enough to achieve the goal. Continue reading →
Why don’t people adopt best practices? I get asked this question a lot. What are some of the possible answers? Sometimes, it’s as simple as people not being aware of the better way. You can’t blame people for not adopting something they haven’t been taught.
Other times, people just get really anchored in the way they were taught to do something. That’s sometimes a variation of “the way we’ve always done it” or they might have been taught a new practice last year. People probably won’t try something new unless they see a problem with the way they’re currently doing it. Or, it might be politically risky to scrap something you just implemented. Either way, the human mind seems to favor the certainty of suboptimal performance over the risk of trying a new way that might not work. Continue reading →
Many executive teams spend significant time and resources developing a differentiating strategy, defining their priorities and deploying performance targets to set them apart from other hospitals or health systems. Unfortunately, all too often they look back and realize that they didn’t get where they planned to go because of poor execution.
Why does this happen? One reason is that operations and the front lines lose focus and alignment to priorities as other issues arise. Managers may not be equipped to handle the priorities in a way that keeps them aligned with the defined true north and strategic performance challenge. Or worse, they focus too heavily on reaching outcome measures without focusing on the processes that deliver those outcomes and engaging the people who actually do the work. Continue reading →
There are many types of problems in the world, and even more methods that can be used to solve them. The key is using the right method or tool to solve the problem at hand.
Let’s start with an analogy. You want to hang a picture on the wall. You have multiple tools at your disposal. Your tools include a screwdriver, a 3D printer, and a hammer and a nail. Now, you could use the handle of the screwdriver to punch the nail into the wall, which might be a bit slow and unsafe. You could use the 3D printer to make a hammer and then pound the nail into the wall, but making the hammer may take a long time and be very costly to produce. Or you could just use the hammer. All three methods would produce the same result, but some may not be as fast or efficient as others. I like to keep this in mind when looking at how to solve a problem. Continue reading →
We hear people talking about population health more often than we did before. This trend is likely to continue as healthcare organizations are working to reduce costs and increase patient value.
Population health is about individualized care and intervening earlier to get a better outcome based on what works for the population. This thinking allows caregivers to see trends across groups of patients and can help them better address their specific needs. Continue reading →
As members of the Catalysis Healthcare Value Network team, we have a unique perspective on healthcare transformation because we go to see many organizations every year. When I reflect on the organizations that I have visited one thing stands out, leadership is key, but it is not always enough.
This year I have seen a few scenarios that demonstrate why an organization needs to work diligently to engage all areas of the organization in the transformation journey. Below are a few of examples of these scenarios played out: Continue reading →
“Without the capacity to measure, we would be uncertain, literally, as to where we stood and where we are going. We would not know if we are rich or poor, hot or cold, old or young. The very word ‘measure’ pervades all fields… You can’t make decisions, connections, money, or music without true measurements.” – Geniat and Libert
In the world of overwhelming data, how do you know if you are measuring the right things? The focus is often on outcome measures. These measures are used to compare performance between organizations and individuals. The struggle is that the outcome measures are often not real-time. It is hard to know whether the improvements you are making have any impact until the end of the month, quarter or year. Good performance measures should focus on systems and processes that create value and are ultimately measured by outcome measures. Continue reading →
Leader standard work is an essential component in a lean environment. The fact is that using lean with processes without changing leadership principles and practices never goes well. Consequently, when leaders stick to their old ways the new lean processes will eventually break.
Leader standard work should include activities that support lean principles. For example, leaders need to schedule time to see reality from the gemba, to develop and coach their team members, and to assess and reinforce the alignment to the True North goals. Continue reading →
