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Innovation and strategy: creativity
leaders and are viewed as role models by their peers.
Some of the most innovative healthcare managers exhibit the
following qualities:
✚ They are consistently curious and eager to learn. Their
commitment to continuous learning also requires them to
abandon ideas that are no longer useful or that get in the way
of advancing knowledge and understanding. They invest in
themselves and their teams by expanding their management
skills, exploring trends in healthcare and in other industries,
visiting other organizations and reading a wide variety of
management literature. They may take online courses and
local workshops to learn from leading experts in healthcare
management and to extend their network with other healthcare
managers. They may engage a mentor to help them honestly
assess their competence and to guide their career path.
✚ They foster a freedom to experiment, even if it means there
will be failures. Innovative healthcare managers understand
that employees grow and thrive when they have opportunities
to express their ideas and try new methods for improving
patient care. They also understand the need to preserve and
protect patient safety, and they strike a healthy balance
between experimentation and tradition by regularly reviewing
policies and procedures. The key is to create an environment
where employees feel safe in suggesting new ideas that
advance the standards for quality assurance.
✚ Innovative managers dare to take a creative approach to
ordinary decisions. Nobel Prize winner, Albert Szent-Györgyi,
said, “Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as
everyone else and seeing something different.” For the
healthcare manager, that might mean looking at the pressure
of competition and seeing a niche that others have overlooked.
A creative administrator might view patient complaints as
opportunities for service improvements or look at compliance
challenges for their potential to improve clinical quality.
Discovery can be a simple thing like playing with scheduling
options to improve throughput or being open to fresh ideas
from employees to reduce turnover. The creative healthcare
manager looks beyond traditional problems to “see something
different.” They conduct brainstorming sessions to draw out
the best ideas of front-line staff. The technique, which was
translated at a workshop in Latin America as “a thunderstorm
of ideas,” empowers employees to take personal responsibility
for solving problems. Front-line staff members encounter
operational problems first and often see solutions before
managers do.
✚ Innovators commit to strategic planning for their organizations.
They devote a few days each year to assemble department
supervisors and the management team to evaluate how well
the organization is serving its community. They analyze the
trends impacting the hospital’s future, assess their readiness to
meet new challenges and set goals for achieving
improvements in operations and in service to the community.
Every organization can benefit from planning. It takes
courageous leadership to initiate the process and follow
through with the plan, applying creative solutions to business
development challenges.
Examples
Innovators can be found in the executive suites and on the front
lines in healthcare delivery systems. Creative managers are
sometimes recognized for their innovation by public awards, but
unsung heroes can also be found in the daily experiences at
hospitals, clinics and public health programmes in every culture.
Here are a few examples:
✚ Quint Studer became the administrator of a hospital in Florida
USA based on his reputation for improving patient satisfaction
at his previous employer. When he started, he approached
employees, one at a time to introduce himself. He said, “Hi.
My name is Quint Studer. I’m the new administrator here and I
work for you. What can I do for you today?” A nurse asked
him to trim the bushes near where she parked her car so it
would be safer for her when she finished her shift after dark.
While she worked, he had the bushes trimmed and put up a
small fence. She was impressed that this administrator cared
about her safety and shared the story with her co-workers. He
earned their trust for other, more significant changes as time
went on. 2
✚ An engineer at a hospital in the Philippines looked for a way to
assure a reliable flow of oxygen from the central supply area to
the surgical suites. He developed a simple pipeline and
adapted a water pump by reversing the polarity to convert it to
a low-cost, highly reliable tool for delivering the vital resource
to where it was needed most. While this method may not be
fully compliant with requirements in all countries, it was efficient
and effective in this setting.
✚ At Park Nicollet, a medical clinic in Minnesota USA, inventory
of medications was the third highest expense. Managing the
inventory was crucial to the financial health of the organization
as much as keeping current medications was vital to patient
care. Managers found that at three departments in one
location, approximately 628 individual containers of medication
were stored with an overall price tag of US$ 32,513. Of this
amount, 28% were high-cost, low-use medications - items
regularly stocked but infrequently used. By setting up a system
that automatically signaled when new items were needed,
improvement teams eliminated 29% of the stock in one
location and reduced cost by 50%. 3
✚ At Selian Lutheran Hospital in Tanzania, managers were
frustrated that only 50% of HIV-AID patients in nearby villages
would comply with the requirement for regular visits to the
clinic to receive the medications needed to keep them alive.
They rallied the assistance of some of the more responsible
patients to become mentors to their co-sufferers. The
voluntary adherence counselors befriended others with HIV-
AIDS and raised the compliance rate to 90%. 4
Examples like these may sound like simple common sense, but
common sense often fails to become common practice.
Innovative healthcare managers search for ways to improve clinical
outcomes, employee engagement, resource usage and the
satisfaction of patients, visitors and staff at every opportunity. They
recognize that simple tactics can sometimes yield exponential
results.
I think I can
If ingenuity doesn’t come naturally, you are not alone; but the good
news is that creativity appears to be a learned behavior. Creativity
begins with a positive attitude, confidence and belief in your
Hospital and Healthcare Innovation Book 2009/2010 15