Piedmont Healthcare Group

Consultant

SITUATION

Piedmont Healthcare Group is a $1.2 billion healthcare system with multiple facilities, from major hospitals to more than 30 physicians offices.  The non-profit Piedmont Healthcare Group has been serving Atlanta and surrounding communities for over 100 years.  But as the group grew from one hospital – Piedmont Hospital – to a much more complicated regional operation, many departments became isolated from the others, primarily due to a lack of inter-operability of the “hybrid” IT systems.  Communication became challenging and business work-flow slowed. As a result, both profit margins and patient satisfaction were getting squeezed.

When PHC engaged Mike Wittenstein, it had already been working for several years on an improvement initiative, called Access to Care (ATC).  But while good work had already been done, success was slow in coming.  Recommendations had either not been adopted or were found technologically challenged.  And both Executive and Board support were beginning to weaken. 

OPPORTUNITY

Jump-start the Access to Care initiative to create preference for high-volume, high-profit services while reducing administrative burden and costs.  Create an Experience Incubator to help prioritize the right initiatives, organize them properly, eliminate wasteful false-starts, and ensure the delivery of high-quality results, especially for first-of-their-kind recommendations.

SOLUTION

Rather than throw the ATC baby out with the bath water, initial conversations with the executive team, including the CEO and folks on the advisory board of the Access to Care team focused on understanding what had hindered ATC efforts to date.  In conjunction with those meetings, Mike also toured facilities (operating room, blood bank, various hospital wings) to experience them from both a customer/patient perspective, as well as a behind-the-scenes employee perspective.  He also experienced how patients were checked in and checked out, dug deep into hospital logistics, learned more about their IT, and got to know some of the rank and file employees.  He also took photos of the waiting areas and signage and documented a visitor’s difficulty finding their way through the facilities.

Mike then worked with the team to craft a Reason for Being for Access to Care that aligned the interests of all its stakeholders.  He worked with team members who resisted cooperating because they feared that change and systems integration might make things worse than they already were.  In short, he helped Piedmont wrangle all their stakeholders to participate in the formation of a coherent, purposeful design objective of which they could take ownership.

Using direct participant involvement, and consensus-building exercises Mike helped Piedmont conclude that healthcare was a human care-centered activity, governed by a certain degree of financial input, but not dictated by politics, government, rights of the insured or insurance companies.  These efforts, coupled with even more research helped define a critical Roles and Accountabilities Design, and desired Emotional Outcomes.

The customer-focused effort was designed to make it easier for patients and their caregivers to get the information they needed and the services they required more quickly and efficiently, while also ensuring there was a positive effect on the System’s bottom line.

In addition, Mike also created an Innovation Incubator, essentially an in-house experience design shop, staffed by third parties to facilitate the streamlined prototyping, documentation, trial, implementation and growth of innovative ideas to support the Reason For Being.

RESULTS

With a 2010 implementation launch still in planninng, it’s still too early to quantify results…