A Change I Want to Share

I wanted to share some exciting news with you. In the coming days, I will be launching a new platform, www.leadingthechangewithjohncouris.com.

Leading the Change is a dynamic and exciting outgrowth of this blog which so many of you follow directly or via my LinkedIn profile. Over the last two years Inventing Health has expanded its focus beyond issues facing the health care field to explore topics in executive leadership, organizational culture, and motivational management, among other issues.

With this expansion came the need to develop a more robust platform. Leading the Change is being established to provide not only insightful and timely content from me on a wide-range of issues, but to offer a space to advocate for effective policies that ensure all Floridians have access to world-class care. Additionally, it will spotlight the innovative, cutting-edge work of Tampa General Hospital and provide a forum to feature other innovative leaders who are making a dramatic impact in the health care industry.

I look forward to continuing a thoughtful dialogue on not only today’s health care and how we can work together to improve care and outcomes, but to engage on management and executive leadership topics.  I can’t wait to share it with you. Stay tuned for information on how you can subscribe and join me in Leading the Change!

Curiouser and Curiouser

I read with great interest a recent article in the Harvard Business Review sent to me by GE Healthcare Account Executive, Jennifer Miller.  In The Business Case for Curiosity, Francesca Gino discusses the benefits to encouraging a “curious” workplace and offers some strategies to help leverage curiosity in driving your business.

As Gino explains, there are several benefits to cultivating curiosity in your organization.

1. Cultivating curiosity at all levels helps leaders and their team members adapt to whatever comes their way. When we are curious, “we tend to think more deeply and rationally about decisions and come up with more creative solutions,” Gino explains.
2. Leaders can drive curiosity—and improve performance—through subtle management shifts and organizational design.
3. Curiosity increases efficiency and helps minimize risk. It helps decrease decision-making errors as it forces us to challenge assumptions as opposed to simply assuming our assumptions
4. It helps contributes to workplace improvements as team members are driven to find creative solutions to challenges facing an organization and become conditioned to seek improvements.
5. Curiosity facilitates better communication and reduces group conflict as team members are better able to see different perspectives and work collaboratively to solve problems.

These all rang true to me, and I try to employ tactics to drive curiosity at TGH from encouraging learning opportunities and modeling curiosity in my own approach to problem-solving, as I have discussed in my most recent blog posts. I also try to encourage team members to ask questions and think about how they can contribute to the overall goals of the organization. 

It is fitting that it was Jennifer who sent me this article as our partnership with GE is rooted in curiosity. Today, Tampa General Hospital and GE Healthcare are partnering to create a new 9,000-square-foot care coordination center which will open next year. The center will use predictive analytics to help improve the experience and outcomes for patients, families and hospital staff. The center will allow us to be more efficient and shorten the time patients are in the hospital by better managing their care. This technology will also help to reach our goal of providing coordinated patient care after they leave the hospital.

It is true what they say, that you will never know where the next great idea will come from. We can all listen. We can all ask questions. When you make exploration an integral part of your organization, you will help drive creativity and innovation.  

Always Learning

I was fascinated by a recent article I read in the Harvard Business Review advocating the importance of creating a work culture that encourages ongoing learning.  In the piece, Four Ways to Create a Learning Culture on Your Team, authors Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Josh Bersin encourage managers to prioritize their own ongoing learning—as well as that of their team members—as a way to remain vibrant and successful and help drive the impact of your business. 

The authors argue that the desire to seek knowledge, learn, ask questions and apply information in new ways is more critical than ever as our organizations are radically and constantly evolving in response to the ongoing digital revolution. Businesses that celebrate a constant quest for knowledge in its team members, they explain, will have a leg up on the competition. As the take away, they provide four tips to implementing a culture of learnability with your own organization.

• Reward continuous learning and critical thinking as a way to ignite innovation.
• Give meaning and constructive feedback to highlight “knowledge gaps” in order to promote learning and improvement.
• Hire curious people to build a team driven to problem solve and innovate new business.
• Lead by example when it comes to your own ongoing learning.

What has stayed with me from the article is the recommendation that leaders promote a culture of learning by practicing what they preach and leading by example. This makes perfect sense to me as I continue to be driven each day by the desire to learn new things and take what I have learned and incorporate it into the work I do.

It is this passion to continue to learn and seek opportunities to learn more, lead by example and the belief that there is always room to grow that has led me pursue a Doctor of Business Administration. In January, I will begin working towards a Ph.D. in Business Administration at the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida. 

I have thought about getting a Ph.D. for years, but the timing has not worked until now. By entering the DBA program, I hope to build on my hard and soft skills and all that I have learned thus far in my over two decades of applied experience. The reality is that the health care industry is always changing and at a dramatic pace, especially as the paradigm of health care delivery moves from provider driven to consumer-focused. To remain vital, you must always be willing to learn, adapt and implement. I hope that what I learn as part of this program, will help better inform the work I do at TGH and out in the community. 

As I work towards my Ph.D., I will also continue to advocate for and encourage my leaders to pursue additional educational opportunities and degree programs. I will also be there to support them along the way. By prioritizing education, we will each not only realize personal and professional goals, we will continue to elevate the quality of work and services provided by TGH. We will build upon and implement all that we have learned and experienced to continue to provide the highest quality service and care—a win for us all.

Dying with Dignity

The last week has been incredibly difficult as I had to say goodbye to my beloved friend and companion, my German Shepard, Lola. Like for many of us dog owners, Lola was more than a pet, she was a faithful companion and loyal friend. She could be found by my side every waking minute I was at home. 

Lola’s illness came on fairly suddenly.  I immediately sought the care and advice of one of the best vets in the region. I wanted to explore all possible treatment options for her. I was prepared to embrace any recommended treatment, no matter the cost. At the same time, I knew I wanted to the right thing by her. I wanted to make sure she was free of pain. I did not want to keep her alive just to make it easier on me. She deserved to die just as she had lived—with dignity and on her own terms.  And so, after long and thoughtful conversation with the vet, and considering all options, I knew the best thing for Lola was to let her go. It was difficult and sad, but peaceful. She did not suffer. 

Lola’s death fell near the anniversary of the passing of my “other” best friend, my father. A vibrant and healthy man, my father died in 2015 after battling cancer. At the end of his life, my family and I were fortunate enough to help make important end of life decisions for him. We were able to move him to a wonderful hospice facility, where he peacefully spent his last few days free of machines, comfortable and surrounded by family in a beautiful and calm setting. While it was an incredibly difficult time, I was comforted in the choice we were able to make regarding my father’s end-of-life care.

Lola’s death as well as my father’s, once again reminds me of the importance of being able to make the appropriate end of life decisions for our loved ones. Often, as health care professionals, we are focused on patient outcomes and restoring their health. As an industry, what we sometimes fail to realize is that the best outcome can sometimes be letting a person go. Each year, it is estimated that 30% of Medicare expenditures (over 50 billion dollars) are attributed to the 5% of patients that will die that year with one-third of those costs occurring in the last month of life.  Furthermore, most studies show that if the person is sick enough, this type of medical intervention does not have a positive impact. In fact, it can make those last few days and months of life worse.

So whether you are a health care professional or a family member, the reality is that we need to openly discuss end of life options before it is too late. And as health care professionals, we also need to devote resources to offering patients and their families the kind of services and space they need in those final difficult days. It was what I was able to provide my father and what I think all families deserve. 

The house is a lot quieter now without Lola. It will take me a while to get used to her not being right there next to me. But, I remain grateful of the time we had together, and I was honored that I was able to make the choice I did at the end of her life.

Walking in their Shoes

As I noted in a recent post, I spent several hours each month working on the front lines with team members across the hospital. Over the course of the last year, I have helped transport patients, worked with surgeons, residents and fellows, logged in 20,000 steps in one night delivering meals, accompanied nurses in the Cardio Thoracic ICU and Neuro ICUs on rounds and vitals, changed beds sheets with patient care techs, drawn blood with phlebotomists, and worked on medical surgical floors with nurses and therapists. In many ways, this is one of my favorite parts of the job—so much so, that I have been doing it for years. 

My intention in shadowing team members is not to spy on them, micromanage operations or garner unnecessary attention. I do this to be a more effective leader and team captain. Through this direct experience with my team members, I am able to understand my team better, grasp the challenges they face and see first-hand the amazing work they do. Additionally, it provides me the opportunity to garner vital feedback and gain invaluable insight into our operations.  

Working side by side my team members, I’m able to build a stronger connection with them. I gain an insight into who they are as people which improves communication. Witnessing their work up close, I can provide better feedback as I have a greater understanding for the complexities of their work, the challenges they face, and the sheer amount they have to accomplish. 

This time I spend with my team members also strengthens our ability to collaborate. Working together in this capacity, we develop a deeper understanding that we’re all in this together and have a greater appreciation for the unique talents we all bring to the table. 

While we might not all have the opportunity to work on the front lines with team members each month, they’re ways in which we as managers can gain a deeper insight into who our team members are as people and glean their perspectives on their work and the organization:

• Ask questions! Ask questions that enable you to understand their process-why they work the way they do. Spend time talking with them to learn what they value most about their work and what they would change if they could.
• Get to know them as people. Always spend the first five minutes talking with them on a subject outside of work. Relay a personal anecdote of your own to encourage them to share something about themselves. This will allow you to build a connection and a sense of trust.

The most effective leaders are ones that listen, act on what they learn and teach along the way. They are also ones who have empathy and an understanding of who their team members are outside of work. Spending time walking in your team members’ shoes will help you develop these skills.

Present and Accounted For

Over the last couple of months, I have met with nearly all of 8,200+ team members in groups of 200 to 300 to present, review and discuss our new organizational strategic plan. Over the course of these two hours sessions, my goal is to communicate to them the direction for the organization, explain their critical role in our evolution and engage with them—answering questions and gaining feedback and insight.

For me, this experience has been beneficial on many levels. It’s been so productive, in fact, that I will be holding one-hour sessions twice a year with my team moving forward. While the topics will vary, I will use this time to engage and connect with team members across the organization. 

One of the biggest takeaways from these sessions for me is the reminder to be present—to entirely focus on my team members when I am with them, to listen and be in the moment. Being present and engaging with others in a focused way allows me to not only create meaningful connections with my teammates and colleagues but helps me and my organization perform at a higher level. I genuinely believe that to lead successfully you must be present.

There are tremendous benefits to being present. Being focused and thus being present, demonstrates to team members that you are engaged, empathize and understand them. You show them that you are actively listening and hearing them. You build camaraderie and connection. Conversely, when you are not focused or present, team members get discouraged and lose motivation. They think if he does not care, why should I.

Being present improves your skills as a leader and manager as it enhances one’s ability to cope with stress, to stay level-headed and allows you to operate from a proactive position as opposed to a reactive one. Often, problems don’t need a definitive solution, they merely need clarity of thought and attention.

Practicing being present can take just that, practice. Here are a few tips to help you focus and thoughtfully engage with colleagues and team members:

• Take a moment to clear your head before each interaction. This will allow you to focus on the person in front of you and the issue at hand.
• Don’t multi-task and give your team member or colleague your full, undivided attention. If this is not possible, reschedule your conversation.
• Don’t interrupt or prematurely form opinions. You want to listen actively. 
• Recap or summarize what your colleague or team member is sharing. This forces you to listen for comprehension and allow you to ask probing questions to understand more thoroughly. 

At the end of the day, what drives us all to do and be our best is the connections we create with others. Being present, listening and focusing on others makes that possible.

From the Bottom Up

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some amazing folks, and I’m not just talking about my direct reports or folks on my immediate team. Every day I work with compassionate and dedicated professionals from hospital dieticians, to transport staff, to operating room nurses to occupational therapists to world-renowned oncologists. They all give 110 percent to the patients in their care and the organizations in which they work. 

In my current role at Tampa General, as was the case in previous positions, I spend several hours a month shadowing team members throughout the hospital. I get to witness their hard work and dedication first hand. I get to “live” the work of the hospital in a profound and very specific way. I am able to talk in-depth with team members, hear their ideas for improving efficiency, see their problem solving skills in action and witness the challenges they face up close.  

These hours each month are some of the most productive - and certainly the most meaningful - I have had the chance to experience. They also directly inform the work that we are trying to accomplish, particularly in the area of innovation. 

Regardless of the industry in which you work, when you are trying to on-board a new initiative or program, you must harness the experience and knowledge of those who are in the trenches every day. You must ensure that your approach supports and enhances the work that is already being done as you work towards achieving buy-in across the organization. If you take the opposite approach and issue a directive to implement a plan or program that was developed by only a small isolated team, you are sure to experience failure. 

For example, at Tampa General we are currently working with GE Healthcare to implement a command center that will serve as mission control for the hospital. The center will use artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to help improve efficiency and shorten the time patients are in the hospital by better managing their care. However, the center will not achieve success on technology alone. It will rely on the expertise and knowledge of team members who are on the ground doing the work. In order to make this center as effective as possible, we must involve team members from across the hospital in the process as we get the center off the ground. 

By involving folks at all levels of your organization as you build a new program, you will not only gain their knowledge and experience, you will empower them to give everything they have to achieve success. They will be able to spot potential problems and work through them as well as see areas for improvement and make recommendations. They will take pride of ownership, feeling heard and engaged.  

The bottom line is that if you’re going to make real change and do it successfully, it has to be built from the bottom up. 

To the Point

No matter what position we hold within an organization, or what place we are in our career, we all need mentors. At the very least, we need colleagues with whom we can seek professional advice in order to get open and honest feedback as well as spitball ideas.

I am often asked what traits I look for in a mentor or colleague. I find myself drawn to folks that are open, honest and direct. Over the course of my career, I have learned the most from people that practice the art of being direct. I say “practice,” because I think there is a skill to being thoughtfully direct without intentionally hurting a team member’s feelings or belittling them. 

I realize that being completely open and direct can cause a bit of anxiety. You don’t want to make a colleague feel bad and or engage in conflict. There are also times when one’s instinct is to believe that telling folks what they want to hear is more comfortable than being honest and upfront.

However, the reality is that beating around the bush doesn’t ultimately work and it takes away from what is important—getting the job done. Being direct, straightforward and honest with colleagues is the only way to go in my experience. 

Direct communication has a lot of benefits, and there are ways to speak openly and honestly without being punitive or demeaning. By being direct you:

• Build trust with your team. 

• Demonstrate that you are honest and authentic.

• Show that you respect colleagues by telling them the truth.

Being direct is also much more efficient than avoiding the problem. Direct communication cuts through the drama, saving energy, time and money.

They are ways to be direct while being mindful of others and their feelings. Here are a few tips:

• Provide feedback that is about the quality of the work and not the person doing it. 

• Be clear and concise.

• Be constructive rather than aggressive.

• Don’t put others in the middle. Speak directly to the source and focus on their work and not that of others.

• Ask follow-up questions to make sure you are being heard and that you are both on the same page. 

• Work to come to an understanding and get “buy-in” from the team member before ending the discussion.

The reality is that there are times when discussions with team members are not going to be fun, and you have to give feedback that is hard to hear. But if you approach the conversation with honesty and thoughtfulness, the news is much more likely to be received in the spirit in which it was intended, and you and your team can move forward with the great work you are looking to accomplish.

True Colors

I have spent the last several blog posts focusing on the lessons I learned from past mistakes. For me, taking on this exercise was not only about the lessons learned and the chance to be self-reflective, but also the opportunity to practice vulnerability.

When everyone spends so much time curating the perfect highlight reel for their Instagram story or Facebook feed, it’s now harder than ever to be open about what is really going on in our lives. While nothing is perfect, it seems that these days we feel the need to paint that picture. And so, I think, it’s important now more than ever to show vulnerability and be willing to admit to one’s flaws and foibles.

Traditionally and especially in business, I believe vulnerability has been viewed as weakness. This negative connotation has often prevented folks in leadership roles from revealing their true selves. And so, when I talk to other leaders and members of my team about this trait, I position it as “practicing vulnerability,” as I think we have to make a conscious effort to show others who we really are.

And while practicing vulnerability can be a scary proposition to some, I would argue that when it comes to leading a team, it has tremendous payoffs. By practicing vulnerability, you:

• Demonstrate that you need others and signal a willingness to collaborate.
• Create a sense of relatability and accessibility among your team and colleagues.
• Inspire others to be vulnerable and follow your lead.
• Build bonds of trust and loyalty.

At the end of the day, being perfect does not equate to being successful. Leaders who admit mistakes, are open and honest about the missteps and flaws garner much more than those who don’t. 

Meeting in the Middle

I’m often asked by colleagues and those I mentor to define my management style. I’ve found, what they’re really asking is for my advice on how I manage a team. A friend recently posed this question to me, and as I had been thinking about the lessons I’ve learned through the mistakes I made, I realized that the way I approach the management of my direct reports today has been significantly informed by my learnings from the past.

Micromanaging is not my style. It never has been, and I can’t imagine it ever will be. I want my team members to feel empowered and accountable. I want them to trust me and know that I trust them. I want morale to be high and team members to feel like they are valued and have significant input in decision making. I feel like none of this is possible when folks are being micromanaged and the team leader is holding the reigns too tight.

Earlier in my career, my mistakes in managing were rooted in the opposite approach—giving my direct reports too much autonomy and freedom. As a result, I experienced moments where team members felt lost or unsure of their direction and tasks failed to get completed or projects remained stuck in place. I encountered a few situations where team members took their new-found level of authority too far and decisions were made that were not in line with our overall objects. Their struggles were a direct result of my choices as a manager and I own that.

Creating a management balance has its challenges but it’s totally achievable. I think over the years I have met my team members in the middle and found a way to create a healthy work environment that is rooted in a mutual trust and respect. I strive to delegate, manage from a safe distance, hold team members accountable and empower them to make decisions and take risks. For me, this is possible by practicing the following:

• Providing clarity around a shared goal of purpose—clearly communicating the how and why so my team has the knowledge to move forward.
• Operating from a place of transparency—letting everyone know what I expect from the start.
• Developing a series of benchmarks and checkpoints for my team so they feel secure and we are all kept up to speed.
• Building an environment where autonomy and accountability make the others possible.

At the end of the day, I want my team members to view me as standing with them as opposed to on top of them or completely out of the frame. My role as a leader is one of the things I cherish most about my work and is the aspect of my job in which I take the most pride. 

On Their Own

As I explained in my last post, I often think there is far more to learn in failure than in success—particularly when it comes to leadership. We all make mistakes—that’s a given. We also tend to beat ourselves up when that happens, and that isn’t productive. Over the last several years, I have started to see things a bit differently. I have begun to celebrate my mistakes. I now choose to see them as an opportunity to learn more about myself and as a tool to develop and improve my skills as a leader and colleague.

As a manager one of the mistakes I have made along the way is too often protecting my team members from failure. As a parent I have often felt the urge to jump in and solve problems in order to protect my child from disappointment or failure. I have experienced a similar impulse in my professional life. There have been times over the years when I have swooped in and taken over to prevent a direct report from experiencing a setback. 

While the desire to protect a team member comes from a good place, the results often don’t benefit anyone. By circumventing failure, I cut off the opportunity for them to learn how to be innovative and find solutions to recurring problems. And so instead of rushing to catch them and stop them from making a mistake, I had to learn to step back and let them try and figure it out—or fail trying. My goal in doing this is to teach team members to be self-sufficient, to problem solve and to take risks—three critical ingredients to success.

Nine out of ten times, team members will successfully navigate the obstacles in front of them. It might take a few recalibrations and coaching to get where they need to be, but for the most part, they get there. Occasionally, a team member is simply out of their depth and cannot succeed at their role. Frustration abounds on all sides. 

And while you must know when to step back, you also must realize when enough is enough and step in. There are times when a team member is not the right fit for a role or the duties assigned, and you must make the tough call and take the appropriate action. This is not pleasant for anyone but letting a team member flounder again and again is not helping them, the rest of the team or the organization.

When stepping back and removing the safety net, there are a few things to be mindful of:

• Don’t let team members be paralyzed by failure after the first attempt. Coach them on recovery and teach them to scenario-plan. 
• Let them know that it is safe to fail and the parameters in which to do so.
• Help team members see the trajectory of their full careers—full of wins and losses—instead of focusing on the immediate success or failure.
• Celebrate and celebrate publicly when failure leads to innovation or discovery.

Finally, and most importantly, be willing to tell your own failure stories. You are leading by example--which is huge. We all have failures to share and we all have a lot to learn from them.

The Road Less Traveled

We’re often asked to benchmark our success—to celebrate what we’ve accomplished and impart to others what we’ve learned from our achievements. This is a valid and important exercise. There is a lot to learn from success. 

When you work hard and achieve something great, there is always something to learn—takeaways to deploy on future projects. You also feel good and want to share that with others. Success can be a great motivator, and you can certainly inspire team members with victorious war stories. 

But what if we step back for a moment and think about things a bit differently—take the path less traveled? What if we take time to consider our failures? What if we spent time reflecting on the mistakes, the missteps, the things we should have said and done?  

I realize this can be difficult, and sometimes stirring up memories and feelings that you would rather leave alone, can be painful and challenging. Taking the time to really evaluate our mistakes requires one to be vulnerable. And while vulnerability is hard, it is also incredibly important. By being vulnerable, by allowing ourselves to see who we really are—warts and all—and letting others see that to, we attain a level of honesty, clarity and a way of being in the world that is invaluable.

Today, and thanks in large part to social media, we spend a significant amount of time curating our world to look perfect to the friend or follower. We obsess on capturing the perfect moment and positioning what is happening in our lives to be viewed like a “best of” highlight reel with the desired goal of driving up likes and engagement. But what if we spent some time reflecting on the moments we chose not to share and really taking a hard look at what we experienced and what we can learn from them?

In the coming posts I’m going to challenge myself to do just this and share with you some of the mistakes I’ve made and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I think there is often far more to learn in failure than in success. 

While we will go more in depth in upcoming posts, here is a quick story to share. I am incredibly passionate about what I do. When explaining to my team a new program or initiative, I tend to get excited and pumped up about what lies ahead and this can sometimes be overwhelming for people. The excitement can cause me to move quicker than the time needed for other team members to process the idea. And while I have a completely solid and well thought out rationale for why we are tackling the project or idea, in the past I have not been as effective as I should have been in clearly communicating that to others. 

As I think back, there have been a few times over the course of my career when I am working with a team member to resolve something that has gone wrong with a project, and after some back and forth, it is revealed that they had no idea (or the wrong idea) as to why we were doing what we were doing. If they were lost, then of course, there were going to be mistakes. And that is completely on me. I take full responsibility for that.

And so how do I apply this knowledge today? I am currently spending time walking the whole Tampa General Hospital team—all 8,000 of them—through our new strategic plan which will serve as a guide for the organization over the next several years. As I prepared to do this, I intentionally and clearly built into my presentation addressing the “whys.” I made sure to stress the “and this is why” as I went through each section of the plan, leaving time for the team to challenge assumptions and ask questions, until they fully understood the plans being put into place. With this approach, everyone from the physicians to the maintenance staff, are clear on our direction moving forward.

I look forward to sharing some of my journey with you in the coming weeks. As always, thanks for engaging with me. I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

Health Leaders Media: Move Over Star Wars; Hospital Command Centers Take the Spotlight

Command centers give health systems a leading edge to manage capacity and improve patient experience.

Health systems face growing capacity challenges and patient experience suffers when access is limited, or delays occur between transitions in care. In response, hospital command centers featuring sophisticated technology are springing up across the country. 

Two new facilities in Florida were announced during the last week of May, joining a list of others that have launched or announced new initiatives since last fall. 

Today’s command centers supercharge the operations many hospitals have in place to manage transfers and bed placement. The new breed uses advanced technology featuring predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. One key advantage is real-time data with information about incoming patients, ED and OR capacity, bed availability, and discharges. 

Opening in 2016, the command center at The Johns Hopkins Hospital is generally acknowledged as the first hospital to launch a concept of this magnitude in the healthcare arena. As additional health systems see value in this approach to capacity management, these new facilities will operate at the leading edge of a trend that will grow over the next decade:

• Florida Hospital in Orlando, a member of Adventist Health System, announced its new facility on May 31, perhaps the first in the new generation of command centers that will orchestrate care for multiple hospitals in its system. This facility will coordinate patient care for nine central Florida hospitals, which include about 2,900 licensed beds, more than 2 million patient visits a year, and 640,000 ED encounters annually
• Florida Hospital operates at 85% to 100% capacity, and many of its logistics issues stem from incoming transfers from its sister facilities. 
• "It is interesting we're going to spend all this money—$15 million—on a technological solution, but it really has an individual person at the center of it," says Eric Stevens, CEO of acute care services at Florida Hospital. The center will bring a new level of technological sophistication to programs already in place, and help the system meet its strategic objective to improve the patient experience. 
• "The core of our product is a high quality clinical outcome," says Stevens. "We think that this technology, in many ways, will help meet all the noble goals we have."   
• Tampa General Hospital, a 1,010-bed non-profit academic medical center in Florida, announced its new "care coordination center" on May 29. The focus will be to advance care coordination, help enhance patient safety and quality, and improve efficiency.
• "We are reinventing how we deliver healthcare by creating a coordinated, patient-centered system of care," said John Couris, MS, president and CEO, in a written statement to HealthLeaders Media. "We are designing it in a way that will provide better support and improve efficiency for our nurses and physicians."
• Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut opened a Capacity Command Center in January, combining real-time data analytics with physical colocation of key operational services to enhance coordination, safety, quality, timeliness, and efficiency in patient care. The facility was developed jointly by the Yale New Haven Health Clinical Redesign initiative, the YNHH in-house analytics staff, and Epic.
• Rush University Medical Center in Chicago announcedtheir facility last October; in December; the Humber River Hospital command center in Ontario opened its doors.

GE Healthcare Partners is helping many of these healthcare systems develop the technology used in their command centers and offers a product-agnostic approach with the ability to work with whatever IT systems a hospital has in place. In 2018 the firm will help install 10 new command centers, serving 30 hospitals. 

Mandy Roth, June 7th 2018

Health Leaders Media

Loyal and True

As I have said before, health care is its own animal when it comes to a free market economy. Health care does not operate like cars, groceries or other commodities. You can’t build loyalty among health care consumers only with incentives like points or cash back rewards. When it comes to health care consumers, there are more complex barriers you must overcome in order to transform them into repeat and loyal customers.

Like all providers of goods and services, as health care providers, we all strive to provide consumers (patients) with the highest quality service (care) that will hopefully result in a positive experience and predisposition to return if additional services are needed. However, unlike with other transactional experiences, a positive patient experience and satisfaction does not directly correlate to loyalty. It can certainly help to move the dial in the right direction, but in the case of health care, satisfaction alone does not drive loyalty. 

While a patient might have been highly satisfied with the treatment they received, there are still barriers that can prevent a patient from returning the next time they need care. These could include:

• Uncertainty. Not knowing if he/she needs care and which level of care is the most appropriate.
• Research. Relying on various sources to find the right provider. This includes searching online, talking to their primary care doctor or even getting recommendations from friends or family.
• Access. Not being able to easily make an appointment. This could be as a result of technology or capacity issues at an office.
• Location. The location of the provider is either difficult to find or too far away.

So, what can we do to overcome these barriers and ensure their loyalty?

Here are three key steps to help get the patient back through your door:

Communicate next steps in their treatment plan before the leave their initial visit. Let patients know what their follow up care should entail and when they should pursue it. You can do this through warm hand offs to a follow up provider in your service network or even co-locating services in the same building. Have your team make the follow up appointments to ensure a seamless experience for the patient. Ongoing communication with the patient after they leave can also help prompt them to take their next step in care.

Motivate patients to return by helping them understand the health benefits of ongoing care and the burdens (financial, emotional and or physical) of foregoing care. This will inspire them to reengage.

Stay top of mind by continuing to reach out and initiate contact once they have left your facility. Provide them with opportunities to engage in wellness and lifestyle offerings—yoga, meditation or exercise and fitness classes. Often providers can leverage community partnerships to help facilitate and cost share these opportunities. By expanding offerings from treatment for illness or injury to wellness services, providers move from being a one-time medical solution to an ongoing health partner.

At the end of the day, patients want to know there is one place they can go to meet all of their health and wellness needs. From a patient’s perspective, loyalty can not only offer convenience, it can also help cement a level of comfort knowing that they have a medical home to turn to. And from a provider perspective, by reducing barriers and providing opportunities for engagement, you will increase patient loyalty and grow your business and brand.

New Roads Ahead

In the first two posts of my three-part series, I provided you with a foundation to better understand the role of consumerism in health care today. I offered some organizational prompts and tools to help you start to develop a consumer-facing plan for your organization. But now we must face the big question… how do we make consumerism a reality in your organization?

As I have said before, the health care industry, or really the delivery of care, is dramatically changing. The rise of consumerism represents a radical paradigm shift in the industry. As a result, there will be challenges along the way as you integrate consumerism into your organization -- the most significant of which is the right speed and the right moment for implementation. You need to understand that things are slow to change, so you have to time your approach accordingly. You also don’t want to get there too fast as you might leave everyone behind, including the patients. You need to map the adoption rate to the actual customer, which is the tricky part. 

While there will certainly be challenges, they are not insurmountable. By asking the right questions, understanding your audience, preparing for the tricky moments and maintaining focus, you will have the tools you need. Here are five tips that will help you be successful:

Tip #1: Understand your bandwidth to do this work.

• What do you have?
• What do you need?
• If you are committed to this work, you need to fill this void with people who know what they are doing—who can hit the ground running.
• Consider hiring people from outside the healthcare industry to implement this work.

Tip #2: Start off slow and be practical.

• Get a couple of quick wins under your belt.
• Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Tip #3: Be willing to fail.

• Failure does not mean you are bad. Failure means you are innovative.

Tip #4: Be able to track and trend.

• What problem are you trying to solve?
• Be able to quantify where you are before you deploy the new technology or program and measure where you are after it is in place. This shows the value in what you are doing.

Tip #5: Focus on how something can be done and not on how something cannot be done.

• Set attainable goals. 

At the end of the day, in our industry, we can all choose to walk one of two paths. The first is the path most traveled. It is the one that continues to do things the way they have always been done when it comes to health care. The path less traveled is the one that recognizes health care delivery, as we know it, is changing.  It is a path of innovation, creativity and looking at the world through a new and different lens. I hope you will join me here.