MHA's Executive Briefing

March Health Affairs Issue: Innovations In Health Care Delivery

Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government was handed an unprecedented set of tools to forge innovation in health care delivery through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Now, as the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation begins its work, the goal is to achieve the vaunted “Triple Aim” of improving individuals’ experience of health care, improving the health of populations, and lowering health care costs.

The March issue of Health Affairs takes a detailed look at health care systems that are already moving ahead with needed innovations in the delivery of care. The issue details how fifteen organizations—ranging from health care systems to health plans and other health initiatives—are working to achieve the Triple Aim.

The new Health Affairs issue will be released at a briefing this morning in Washington D.C. Join us at the W Hotel Washington or follow the event through live Tweets at #HA_Innovation on HA_Events.
Profiles of the fifteen organizations, who presented their initiatives at Health Affairs’ Innovations across the Nation in Health Care Delivery conference on December 16, 2010, demonstrate that there are clear commonalities and common-sense strategies underpinning their success. At the same time, it is clear that change is hard and challenges remain. The profiles describe what these innovators have achieved despite myriad constraints, such as fragmented delivery systems and flawed payment structures, and suggest what could be accomplished if these constraints were eliminated.

Read more here.

Try new tactics to encourage innovation

A companywide culture of creativity starts in the C-suite, writes Barry Gruenberg, so every leader should take a hard look at whether they're doing enough to foster innovation. This 41-point checklist will help you smooth out some of the innovation-blocking wrinkles in your management style.

Four Ways Of Seeing That Set True Innovators Apart

All true innovators have some mix of four key traits, write Rowan Gibson and Terry Waghorn. Among them: An ability to spot trends before they're obvious to everyone else and an ability to intuit hidden potential in existing competencies. These traits are ones that all managers have the potential to unlock in themselves, argue Gibson and Waghorn.

Read more from Forbes here.

Hospitals Work on Processes, Elements of Change Management

Hospitals are sick and need our help. That is the message process improvement concepts like Lean and Six Sigma hope to address as they become more commonly used in health care.

Learn more here.

15 rules for implementing innovation

Bright ideas are only the beginning, writes Mike Myatt; for innovation to mean anything, you've got to put it into action. Follow these 15 rules to get your latest brainwave off the drawing board and into the marketplace.

So You Want to Innovate?

Just as people in the developing world learn to improvise with what they have, so too companies can be driven to creativity by scarcity, writes Sohrab Vossoughi. Tough market conditions can prompt revolutionary new approaches to old problems: GE is focusing on creating low-cost products for developing markets and ZoomCare is carving out a niche offering budget health care to the uninsured "A mindset of scarcity and resourcefulness helps to cut costs," Vossoughi writes. "It's also a mindset that can benefit change-makers in the current health-care discussions."

Read more in BusinessWeek here.

Growth through innovation

This BusinessWeek special report looks at how innovation can steer a company's strategy, even in tough times.

Everything you’ve always wanted to know about innovation* but were afraid to ask

Unless an organization can respond to changes in the external environment over time it will eventually get into trouble. Equally, if an organization does not come up with any new ideas at all, it will similarly wither because products and markets tend to commodify over time and margins are eventually squeezed by newer, smaller, more nimble rivals.

What’s needed, clearly, is a balance. So what is the right level of risk, and how should companies allocate resources between managing old ideas and coming up with new ideas?

Read the full blog post from Fast Company's FC Expert Blog.

 

Is innovation just another business model? 3 systemic innovation processes

Innovation is no longer the product of a singular “a-ha” moment. It has evolved into a field that can be both studied and predicted, according to Judith Rodin, the President of the Rockefeller Foundation. At the Clinton Global Initiative last week, Rodin suggested three systematic innovation processes that can be applied to social sector issues like global warming and malnutrition.

Read the full article from Fast Company Leadership Weekly.

Encourage and Develop a Culture of Innovation

Recently, health care organizations have spent time and energy looking for ways to shave costs. Layoffs of valued employees have followed, and in extreme circumstances, entire service lines are being looked at as a way to trim the fat as reimbursements have declined. But cutting the fat will only get you so far, says Matt Krathwohl, executive director of performance at Memorial Hospital South Bend, and featured "Culture" panelist at the HealthLeaders 09: Hospital of the Future Now conference in October.

Learn more here.