The Lens: Recent Episodes
Catalysis
Get a glimpse inside healthcare organizations that are transforming to a culture of improvement to deliver continually higher value outcomes for patients, staff, and communities.
Sam Nordberg, who serves as the Chief of Integrated Behavioral Health at Reliant Medical Group in Massachusetts, tells us about the platform-based digital Ecosystem they are using to help treat mental health issues.
Carol Shields, the Director of Performance Excellence at Community Health Network in Indiana, explains how their Baldridge award journey has helped the improvement work at Community Health.
Bryan Cutliff, from SA Partners, details the concept and research of self-leadership and its role as an engagement system within organizations.
Julie King, who leads DEI efforts at Advocate Health Care in IL as well as DEI Learning and Education across the national Advocate Health enterprise, joins us to discuss equity in healthcare, as a continuation from the panel at the 2023 Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit.
Dr. Erik Mikaitis, Dr. Katie Radigan, Dr. Joe Palter, Jennifer Rozenich, and Andrea Ramel, from Cook County Health in Chicago, describe the process and work they did in the last year to quickly identify and treat sepsis.
Jenny Han, Director of Design Integration at The Boldt Company, shares about Boldt’s use of Lean in the development of their modular design healthcare units.
Dr. Elizabeth Warner, Chief Medical Officer at Cherry Health in Michigan and author, joins us to describe the concept and practice of Appreciative Inquiry in healthcare.
Jamie Stillwill and Joell Teal, from the University of Washington – Valley Medical Center, share about their multi-tiered internal recognition program.
Joe Sluka and Dr. Jeff Absalon, from Level Zero, discuss alignment in healthcare organizations and the roles of the board, executive team, and physicians in cultivating this alignment.
Molly Rank and David Allison, former staff at Peace Health discuss preventing harm through root cause analysis (RCA) and examine the link between RCA and an organization’s Lean Improvement Strategy.
Mark Graban joins us to talk about his book, The Mistakes that Make Us, which focuses on how to learn from mistakes and create a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
Dr. John Toussaint, Catalysis’ Executive Board Chair and Steve Shortell, Co-Founder of the Center for Lean Engagement and Research (CLEAR) at the University of California – Berkley, join us to discuss the content of the article they helped write, "The Better Care Plan: A Blueprint for Improving America’s Healthcare System." This article explores how to transition the current fee-for-service system in America to a risk-adjusted payment system with increased transparency on performance to continuously improve outcomes.
Amy Mervak and Mike Radtke, faculty of the workshop, Making Change Stick, focus on the many hidden factors that can be barriers to individual and organizational change efforts, how to make these factors visible, and address them.
Ginger Breeck, Executive Director of Patient Safety & Experience at the Community Health Network in Indiana, shares about Community Health's work to develop a strong and supportive process for Root Cause Analysis, or RCA.
Adam Thompson and Aisha Amira Saidu, of EHA Clinics in Nigeria, Africa share how they are using a variety of non-traditional resources to encourage everyone in their organization to see themselves as part of improvement and lean.
Pam Helander, Catalysis faculty, shares about the pilot workshop, Lean Management System in Action, that Catalysis held at Mount Sinai Morningside in New York City.
Todd Fischer, Ian Wedgewood, Ken Shanahan, and Krystal Cassanelli from the University Campus of UMass Memorial Health describe the redesign of their Emergency Department (ED) to streamline the flow for patient discharge.
Jamie Stilwill and Kristine Nicholson, from the University of Washington, Valley Medical Center in Renton, Washington, share about their Improvement idea program that has been in place for 6 years.
Kim Keller, Mary Ghaly Akella, and Shelcy Kamrud, from Mount Sinai Morningside, join us to share about their experiences transitioning to healthcare from continuous improvement roles within other industries.
Elizabeth Howe, Director of Performance Excellence at Duke University Health System in North Carolina, explains the process that Duke followed to introduce a Workflow Redesign and Digital Integration as part of their Digital Front Door to streamline the patient intake process.
Hear from Glenda Reichert, a Performance Improvement Analyst with UnityPoint Health at Trinity in Muscatine, Iowa, who has been part of the Catalysis community for many years. Glenda shares about how Trinity continues to review and apply shared learnings from Catalysis in their work.
Rachel DeMaster, Director, Care Improvement & Innovation and Kristy Consoli, Administrative Specialist, Care Improvement and Innovation Services from Montage Health located in Monterey, CA join us to talk about their experience and learnings from hosting a recent Gemba visit for fellow Catalysis Healthcare Value Network members.
Kellie Olmstead, Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at Nemours Children's Health in Jacksonville, Florida joins us to describe the Clinical Pathways improvement work and progress made at Nemours.
John Toussaint, MD, Executive Chairman of the Catalysis Board of Directors, explains the importance of healthcare organizations engaging the Board of Directors in improvement work.
How do you spread and sustain improvement work as an organization? Being able to successfully respond to this challenge is vital to an organization’s success. In this episode we are joined by Kim Keller, Mary Ghaly Akella, and Shelcy Kamrud, from Mount Sinai Morningside, one of our Catalysis Healthcare Value Network members, to discuss their approach and experience implementing a Daily Management System.
This team will also be teaching a Pre-Summit workshop “Prioritize Your Process: Tactics to Improve, Spread and Sustain Daily Management” at our annual Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit in Chicago this June. To learn more about their workshop, visit createvalue.org/summit.
Effective problem solving is foundational in a culture of continuous improvement. Today we are joined by Catalysis faculty member, Jenn Christison, to hear about the role collaboration plays in supporting more innovative problem solving. Jenn will delve even further into this topic during her Pre-Summit workshop “Engaging Your Teams in Collaborative Process Design” in Chicago this June. Please go to createvalue.org/summit to learn more.
Elina Reponen, MD, Ph.D., Chief Anesthesiologist at the Helsinki University Hospital, shares with us about her experience in Finland using the self-assessment instrument for Lean implementation in a healthcare system that was developed by CLEAR (the Center for Lean Engagement and Research).
Kevin Reynolds, Radiology Technologist and Senior Clinical Quality Manager, and Liz Trumble, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with the Center for Innovation and Transformational Change, from UMass Memorial Health discuss their improvement work on patient discharge barriers. For additional information, see their recently published white paper "Discharge Barriers Escalation (Radiology): Easy Access to Information and EHR Messaging Platform Reduce Discharge Delays" on createvalue.org under Resources and White Papers.
Dr. Lisa Yerian, a Surgical Pathologist and Chief Improvement Officer at the Cleveland Clinic shares her thoughts about the impact of lean in healthcare.
Donna Litwinski, Executive Director of the Lean Resource Office with the Memorial Care Health System in Fountain Valley, California shares some of her reflections on improvement and what she sees ahead.
Sarah Sydlowski, Associate Chief Improvement Officer, and Melissa Vandergriff, Continuous Improvement Director from the Cleveland Clinic join us to share about the value and use of Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs.
Walter Bilgram, the now retired former Vice President of Operational Excellence at BJC Healthcare in Missouri shares his thoughts and reflections on his career and over 30 years of work in quality and improvement.
Dr. Pierre-Luc Fournier, Professor of Operations Management at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, and a contributor to our partner CLEAR (the Center for Lean Engagement and Research) at the University of California – Berkley School of Public Health, shares about the results of a study done on the psychological barriers to problem-solving and agility in healthcare.
Pete Knox and Ted Toussaint from Prospect3 share about their work with health system leaders to accelerate their journey to population health by redesigning primary care and building internal capability for redesign and new care model development.
Matt Pollard, a former ER doctor and now Vice President of Continuous Improvement at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City discusses the importance of closing the loop and constant diligence in maintaining and examining your systems to keep them moving forward.
Alli Kulp, Todd Schneider, and Emily Swaney join us from OhioHealth, one of our Catalysis Healthcare Value Network member organizations. They took the opportunity to send a group to the 2022 Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit and share about the process they created to categorize and prioritize their team’s takeaways and learnings to ensure they got the most out of the event.
We hear from the team from UMass Memorial Health System about their operating room preference cards improvement project.
Dr. Lee Erickson, Senior VP & Chief Quality Officer with Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts shares about Integrated Daily Management Systems and Tiered huddles and how they are all interconnected to improve all outcomes.
We are joined by Jeannine Grinnell, CEO of UW Medicine – Valley Medical Center, who presented a keynote at the 2022 Catalysis Lean Healthcare Summit, sharing about their journey and work to “build a better boat.”
Daily huddles are an important element in a lean management system. Shelcy Kamrud and Natalie Bergstrom, from Mount Sinai Morningside, share with us about how they implemented and adapted their daily huddle standard to their Patient Care Liaison team, virtually.
Kim Brown and Beau Gostomsky, from Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, join us to talk about how they have implemented and learned from huddles for Shared Services leaders.
Dr. Mike Conroy, Chief Medical Officer for Sutter Medical Group in Sacramento, shares how he uses leader standard work and what he has learned. Leader standard work has been a big topic of conversation throughout the Catalysis community because it helps us stay focused on what matters most.
Don Shilton, Executive Coach with Catalysis, explains how healthcare executives he is coaching have been utilizing a buddy system to help them with personal development.
We are joined by Ken Segel from Value Capture, to reflect on the impact of RaDonda Vaught’s conviction on healthcare. Ken co-authored an article with John Toussaint, “4 Actions to Reduce Medical Errors in US Hospitals,” that was recently published in Harvard Business Review.
Model cells are test centers in an organization to experiment with new ideas and provide the opportunity to showcase what’s possible to the rest of the organization. Julie Williams, Operational Innovation Specialist at Nebraska Methodist Health System, shares with us about the model cell work they have done at Methodist Health System.
Mike Radtke, Catalysis faculty, talks with us about effective coaching and experimentation in problem solving.
Strategy is about making choices to create unique and relevant value for patients under conditions of uncertainty and competition. Making choices reduces overburden. Following the voice of the customer creates a unique, differentiated value proposition. Aligning resources around the top priorities reduces confusion. And the use of rapid learning cycles in the deployment of those priorities enables organizational agility. A system using visual management and standard work compels people at every level in the organization to contribute to the most important priorities as defined by patients. Jeff Hunter discusses using visual management of strategy deployment.
Kata is a pattern or routine that serves as a guide to proficiency and expertise. Bill Boyd, Catalysis faculty, explains the use of kata in healthcare and how it engages team members in rapid cycles of experimentation.
As your organization matures on the journey to organizational excellence the function of the improvement team evolves from project-based facilitation to supporting leaders through culture transformation. Today I am joined by Catalysis staff and faculty to discuss the importance of building coaching capability within your PI team.
If you are looking to develop you coaching skills check out our virtual workshop, Building Coaching Capabilities: Transforming Your Improvement Team at createvaleu.org/coachingcapabilities or check out our full list of upcoming workshops at createvalue.org/workshops.
In the last two years, healthcare delivery has gone through a significant evolution. Telehealth services that were once rare, became the predominant method. In addition, with the growth of technology, other work is being done to deliver care at home or outside of the traditional setting of a hospital or clinic. We are joined by Patrick Conway, the CEO of Care Solutions at Optum to talk about this innovative work to provide patient care.
Data is important to driving improvement work. It is not always easy to access the right information or to analyze it in a way that can be used to create real, sustainable change. In 2019, Dr. Dan Low, from Seattle Children’s Hospital, presented a learning session on how they were using data to improve outcomes. He joins us on the podcast to discuss how every patient can make the system smarter when it comes to data collection.
Stefan Agamanolis, Chief Innovation Officer, and Mike Antochow, Operational Excellence and Innovation Leader, from Akron Children’s Hospital talk about work in their Innovation Center. Akron Children’s Hospital is a member of the Catalysis Healthcare Value Network and recently shared a case study about work in a sharing session open to other members.
Trevor Hall, Vice President of Human Resources, Communications, Continuous Improvement and Appeals at Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board, talks about the value of leader standard work, specifically the impact of leader standard work when starting a new role.
We are joined by a team of nurses and CI staff from Michigan Medicine to discuss how they have been using process observation, or process confirmation as they like to call it, as a tool for problem-solving within their management system.
Dr. Dorothy Hung, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Lean Engagement & Research at the University of California - Berkley (CLEAR) joins The Lens to discuss recent research CLEAR completed through interviews with healthcare leaders on the benefits of using a Daily Management System during the pandemic. CLEAR is a partner of Catalysis in providing objective academic research in the application of Lean in Healthcare.
Michele Smith, Catalysis Faculty, shares practical concepts that can help you develop as a leader in a continuous improvement environment.
Aditi Patil, Catalysis faculty member, shares how to engage people through communication by using a storytelling approach. This approach is a powerful way to influence and connect people throughout an organizational transformation.
A team from Torrance Memorial Medical Center to talk about improvement work done around bed capacity.
Ryan Haley, Senior Director of Ambulatory Services at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center was instrumental in developing and establishing the mass vaccination facility in Columbus, Ohio. Specifically, they set up in the Schottenstein Center, a 20,000 seat arena in Columbus. An important part of operating effectively was visual management and cues for those staffing the workflow.
New care model development requires investment in planning for the future where care needs may look very different than they currently do to stay relevant. This week we will share an excerpt from Anita Iyenger, Chief Strategy Officer at Legacy Health, discussing her organizational and personal leadership experiences around leading and managing deep and lasting change including developing new care models.
If you are interested in new care model development, Catalysis can help. We develop customized transformation roadmaps that engage all levels of the organization and help you progress your transformation journey. Learn more at createvlaue.org/transformation-roadmap.
It’s not uncommon to see regression after process changes have been implemented. It is important to understand why this is occurring and mitigate those issues. Catalysis Healthcare Value Network member organization, Children’s Mercy Kansas City has shared their improvement work in many ways, including at the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit and Network Sharing Sessions. This episode features Shelly Hammer, PI Consultant, and Rio Zammeron, Manager of Language Services to dive deeper into how they got new processes back on track after they noticed them regressing.
How do you create an organization where everyone is continuously learning, improving, and remaining committed to its purpose every day? Leaders from various industries including healthcare, information technology, manufacturing, and finance are constantly searching for the answer to this question. Laurie Spadaro, Director, MBOE, Fisher College of Business Executive Education, joins us to talk about the MBOE Program.
Peter Ward, Director, Center for Operational Excellence, discusses how lean thinking helped with establishing mass vaccination sites in metro areas across the country. As well as how this thinking translated in the transition to smaller vaccination sites after the initial rush.
Today we have a special treat for our listeners. We will be sharing a segment of the PI leader discussion panel from our Summit in June. The panel features Penny Iannelli from UMass Memorial Health Care, Carlos Scholz from The Permanente Medical Group, and Yvett Sena from UNM Health System. The session is moderated by my colleague, Chris Weisbrod. These improvement leaders share insights about their lean journey.
Kellie Olmstead, Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at Nemours shares about how they utilized multiple aspects of the management system in defining as well as deploying their strategic plan.
In this episode, we discuss building the foundation for lean transformation with Tom Hartman, Executive Coach at Catalysis and former senior executive at Autoliv, the world’s largest manufacturer of automotive safety products. This foundation is your organization's purpose combined with principles and values and it starts at the executive level.
John Toussaint, MD, co-author of Becoming the Change and thought leader in healthcare improvement describes using an A3 for personal development at the leadership level.
Designing new care models is the way that healthcare organizations are preparing for the demands in the future healthcare environment. To truly redesign a care model means to drastically change the way an organization delivers care to their patients.
Colby Parrott, Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Vancouver Clinic, joins us to discuss how process improvement supports the strategy of the organization. Aligning the work of the organization with strategy is an integral step in achieving success.
Dr. Lee Erickson, a long-time lean leader with experience in multiple healthcare organizations, discusses with us how a daily management system can help reduce the need for a full-blown root cause analysis.
John Toussaint, MD, founder of Catalysis and co-author of Becoming the Change, explains why leader behaviors are fundamental to building a culture of improvement.
Pam Helander, Catalysis Faculty, to discusses lessons learned while implementing a lean management system. Pam has worked in many roles within healthcare, from a bedside nurse to the executive level and has spent a large part of her career developing, implementing, and leading within a lean management system.
Paul Kempinski, President and Chief Executive Officer at Children’s Mercy Kansas City; a member of the Catalysis Healthcare Value Network, shares how Children’s Mercy now has a network of over 300 tiered huddles that occur throughout their organization each day and activating their over 8000 employees as improvement specialists.
Many news headlines have been highlighting the fact that the US is not vaccinating as many people per day as they had hoped. There is a myriad of reasons, but it often comes down to lack of planning, poor processes, and flow of the vaccines into the hands of those who administer them. But there are many healthcare organizations out there who are well versed in lean thinking and problems-solving that have created processes to achieve the necessary goals for number of people vaccinated per day. One of those organizations is Salem Health in Oregon.
Today I am joined by Team members, Pam Reznicsek and Whitney D’Aboy, from Salem Health to talk about their vaccine clinic and how they are using continuous improvement methods to meet and exceed their goals for getting their community vaccinated.
The COVID-19 vaccine is on the minds of everyone around the world. Here in the US the vaccine roll out can be very different depending on state, county, or event city. We hope that by sharing work that is going on in healthcare organizations we can help others that may not be as far along in the roll out, or help others improve their processes.
Today I am joined by team members from Torrance Memorial Hospital, a member organization of the Catalysis Healthcare Value Network. We have Jeremiah Hargrave, Leah, Romine, and Christopher Bacon who will share about the COVID-19 vaccination process and how it was developed.
Dr. Eric Dickson, CEO at UMass Memorial Health Care, and John Toussaint, Executive Chairman of the Board at Catalysis. We have invited them both to help us discuss the difference between continuous improvement and new care model development. Both methodologies are important for healthcare systems to utilize in order to remain competitive and relevant in the future.
"We need both evolution and revolution. Right now we have great processes for evolution – continuous improvement of a value stream, which in some cases (as John mentioned) allows us to do the wrong thing more and more efficiently over time. So we get twice as good at doing the wrong thing. Sometimes that locks you into keeping it the same way. We need good processes to look for that revolution piece – that new breakthrough. It is something that I am looking forward to learning more about overtime." - Eric Dickson
Steve Shortell, of the Center for Lean Engagement and Research (CLEAR), joins us to share some of the most recent research findings. Their research indicates that hospitals who are practicing lean as their continuous improvement methodology perform better on many commonly measured performance metrics. They see evidence that the greater the degree of lean practice in an organization, the lower the spend per patient, the lower their 30 day readmission rates, and the higher the patient satisfaction scores. Papers on this research are under review for publication.
John Toussaint, MD, shares information from a recently published article in the Harvard Business Review about The Better Care Plan. This plan is based on a fixed amount paid paid to providers for each covered patient in a capitated payment model. This model also includes financial incentives for providers would improve quality and reduce total costs.
A panel of Catalysis faculty members, including Ted Toussaint, Adam Ward, and Pete Knox join us to discuss new care model development and why this thinking is the future of healthcare delivery. New care models must be designed to meet the needs of the future healthcare environment. Process improvement techniques will not make a large enough impact to meet future demands.
Dr. Jeff Thompson, CEO Emeritus with the Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, WI, and Catalysis Board member, discussed the importance of culture and principles in effective and sustainable organizational change. As well as the steps necessary to operationalizing a principle-based approach to culture change and continuous improvement. A principle-based approach has been valuable to many healthcare organizations as they navigate and respond to the changing environment that the COVID-19 pandemic presents.
Lisa Yerian, MD, Chief Improvement Officer and Gastrointestinal and Hepatobiliary Pathologist at the Cleveland Clinic, shares about how Cleveland Clinic engaged 52,000 caregivers in a culture of continuous improvement on a quest to deliver safer, more efficient, and more compassionate care. Dr. Yerian also explains how this culture has enabled the organization to remain nimble and responsive throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Orry Fiume former VP of Finance and Admin at Wiremold and author of the Shingo Prize winning book “Real Numbers: Management Accounting in a Lean Organization”. We are discussing the importance of good metrics and how to use them.
"Not everything that counts can be counted." - Orry Fiume
COVID-19 has impacted healthcare organizations across the globe in many different ways depending on the country or region they are in. We have found that those organizations who have a management system in place and are practicing the principles and behaviors of organizational excellence have been able to more rapidly adapt to the changing needs of their communities throughout the pandemic.
For our first internationally recorded podcast, I am joined by Gladys Bogoshi, CEO of a hospital in the Gauteng province in South Africa, which is the smallest, but most populated province in the country. They have been at the forefront of fighting COVID-19 in South Africa.
The Shingo Principles are the foundation to building a culture of continuous improvement. A big part of shaping a culture that drives organizational excellence is aligning the entire organization to its big goal – its why.
A recent article on HBR written by Ken Segel and John Toussaint stated that before the COVID-19 pandemic struck the US health care industry suffered more than 550,000 work-related injuries or illnesses per year. This number is significantly greater than any other industry. Healthcare leaders can prevent work-related injuries. In this episode Ken Seagel, Managing Director at Value Capture LLC, and John Toussaint, Executive Chairman of the Board at Catalysis, share five leadership imperatives to protecting healthcare workers.
Teams all over the world are now adjusting their huddles and works systems to meet their needs in a virtual environment. Jenn Christison, Senior Director – Improvement Strategy at Seattle Children’s, and her team have been experimenting with ways they can stay connected as a team and move the work forward in a virtual environment.
Healthcare is in the midst of a massive disruption. With financial structures in tatters and the future uncertain, this is the moment to begin the revolution. But first, leaders need to learn how to support staff at all levels as they make transformational improvements in care. John Toussaint and Kim Barnas are joining me today to discuss how healthcare leaders are implementing behavior-driven strategies to ensure quality and create lasting change.
Catalysis Healthcare Value Network member, Christie Clinic in Champaign, IL, used to see full waiting rooms as a sign of success, but the COVID-19 pandemic changed their perspective. They have put many process changes in place to limit exposure to the virus. Now their goal is to have empty waiting rooms as a way to keep patients and staff safe. In this episode Michelle Antonacci, Director of Clinical Services, shares about these changes, including their innovative Curbside care approach.
The COVID-19 pandemic turned many of our lives upside down and inside out, which highlighted the need for leaders to be able to help their staff by translating behavior and shifting thinking to help keep work environments positive for everyone. Today Kerri Burchill, Organizational Development Leader at Southern Illinois Health, will share a methodology that leaders can use to help staff who are struggling in the rapidly changing environment that COVID-19 has presented.
In this episode you will hear examples of conversations around tough topics facing healthcare workers across the country. These scenarios demonstrate the 4 step process that Kerri Burchill teaches.
Jeremiah Hargrave, Process Improvement leader at Torrance Memorial in California, will talk with us about how they were able to help meet two core strategies; no layoffs and meet PPE needs by practicing their core values and continuous improvement practices.
Check out this related article "Can You Answer These Five Questions?," by John Toussaint
Catalysis faculty member and author of Patient-Centered Strategy, Jeff Hunter to discuss some of the questions that he has been hearing from healthcare leaders on how COVID-19 is and should impact their strategy deployment process.
Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in New York City has built a culture of improvement on a foundation of principles. In this podcast Maytal Rand, Emergency Manager, shares the story of their Haircuts for Heroes program. This is just one of the ways that they are showing respect for their staff during the stressful time COVID-19 has presented. This story presents evidence of their strong culture and principle-based leadership.
Jane Jerzak, a partner with Wipfli, CPAs and Consultants, shares funding opportunities that are available for healthcare organizations to help with the significant financial burden that the COVID-19 is causing. Jane works with healthcare organizations in both larger communities and rural settings.
We continue the discussion with Lucy Xenophon, Chief Transformation Officer, Brian Radbill, Incident Commander and CMO, and Art Gianelli, President, from Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in New York City. Being in New York City puts them at the heart of the crisis. They share what they are doign to support front line staff, how their improvement team has supported the organization during this time of crisis, as well as what systems they have put in place that have been particularly valuable in the fight against COVID-19.
Lucy Xenophon, Chief Transformation Officer, Brian Radbill, Incident Commander and CMO, and Art Gianelli, President, from Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in New York City share learings from the COVID-19 pandemic. Being in New York City puts them at the heart of the crisis. Hear about the current state at the hospital as well as advice they have for preparing for a possible surge of COVID-19 patients.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed lives for everyone across the globe and has hit the healthcare industry hard. Our Catalysis Healthcare Value Network members have shared a lot of standard work and other information with us that can be helpful for hospitals all over the world.
We are grateful for the hardworking healthcare professionals who are working tirelessly under difficult circumstances. Catalysis is working to bring together resources to help our community learn, share, and connect around navigating through the COVID-19 pandemic. Catalysis will do all we can to leverage our resources and network to be part of the solution to this crisis. You can access resources on our website, createvalue.org, on the COVID-19 Resources page.
In this episode we discuss the management system at the model cell level with Kim Barnas, author of Beyond Heroes, and CEO at Catalysis.
If you use the model cell approach to implementing a management system you are able to see where your opportunities to improve are and are able to work those out before you spread to other areas. Each time you spread the management system to an new area or unit it is a chance for PDSA. The model cell approach is intended to keep you from spreading systems and processes that don't work.
The Model Cell is a critical first step in an organization’s transformation journey. It serves as a test center where operations can experiment with ideas, embrace failure as a path to learning, and put new concepts into action. This area will become the demonstration site as you spread continuous improvement throughout the organization. It is important to support this team to develop behaviors and learn tools for continuous improvement and problem solving as will as support them through building a daily management system.
The improvement team is more than a group of people who carry a toolbox to support operations with the improvement process. This team supports both the senior leadership team and that model cell through out the cultural transformation by teaching and coaching to ensure that everyone in the organization has the knowledge and skills, and practices the necessary behaviors to propel and sustain the cultural transformation to organizational excellence.
Executives and senior leaders are responsible for ensuring that resources are available, so they deliver on the organization strategy, daily operations, and continuous improvement. The management system allows leaders to deliver on these expectations while adhering to the aligning principles of organizational excellence, including creating constancy of purpose and thinking systemically.
The Senior Leadership Team sets the tone for the organization transformation. Their commitment and understanding of the journey to come is essential to the success of the transformation. Defining leadership behaviors necessary to lead and sustain a cultural transformation is a critical part of their role. In addition, Senior Leadership Team must develop leadership standards, define the direction for the organization, and build an Executive Management System that will allow them to support the organization on the journey to organizational excellence.
Board engagement is often overlooked as part of the cultural transformation.
There are four content areas a board needs to focus on to provide needed support to management in this culture transformation journey.
Ensure grounding through increasing their knowledge of principles, behaviors, and systems and practicing the methods of organizational excellence.
Clearly establish the difference in roles between the board and management. It’s the board’s responsibility to work with management to develop strategy and oversee critical functions however, not be involved in operations. Making the distinction clear results in the board and management functioning at a high level.
Succession planning. They choose the next CEO and to choose new board members as terms expire. This can’t be done unless the board deeply understands the needs of an organization undergoing the transition to organizational excellence.
Learn how to improve their own work. Specific systems need to be developed by the board that help to support governance improvement.
Healthcare organizations all around the world are working to transform their organizations to a culture of improvement to deliver continually higher value outcomes for patients, staff, and communities. In this podcast listeners will hear from healthcare leaders who are accelerating change within their organizations. Discussions will include topics like continuous improvement, strategy definition and deployment, and leadership behaviors for cultural transformation.