The Lens

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.