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How Does Mass General Tap Its Own Brain Power to Innovate?

Analysis  |  By Mandy Roth  
   August 15, 2018

Healthcare Transformation Lab creates a culture of innovation by nurturing clinician and staff ideas.

How do you tap into the brain power within your health system to innovate? The Healthcare Transformation Lab (HTL) at Massachusetts General Hospital has found multiple ways.

The Lab is one of many innovation arms at Mass General, a 999-bed facility in Boston, which consistently ranks among the top five hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.

HTL's mission is to improve the experience and value of healthcare through collaborative innovation. Rather than imposing solutions on physicians and frontline personnel, it turns to them for ideas.

"We're in a period of serious change," says Julianne Soriano, HTL senior operations manager. "We're transitioning from volume-based to value-based care. At the same time, policies and reimbursement are changing. We want to empower clinicians to feel like agents of this change and less like helpless recipients."

Soriano is one of the experts featured at HealthLeaders NEXT Hospital Innovation, October 7—9, 2018, in Dallas. The conference includes innovators from 10 of the nation's top health systems, showcasing their approaches to innovation and sharing how they brought applications and tools to market.

Building a Framework for Change
 

Mass General's Healthcare Transformation Lab is the brainchild of Eric Isselbacher, MD, MHCDS, the founder and director of the four-year-old enterprise.

"He wanted to harness the talent and brilliance of our clinicians to figure out how we can make health care better for our patients," says Soriano. To plot a course, Isselbacher, a cardiologist at Mass General and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, returned to school and obtained a master's degree in health care delivery science from Dartmouth College. 

The HTL includes five operational staff members, interns, and at least two residents participating in a one-year fellowship program. These efforts are supplemented by people who have fulltime jobs at the hospital but devote their extra time to involvement in the Lab's initiatives thanks to a passion for innovation.

A Contest to Stimulate Ideas
 

The Lab is mindful of a dynamic that sometimes occurs when hospitals or health systems ask people to offer suggestions for change. If the organization is unable to act on the ideas, contributors may become disillusioned.

HTL worked with Harvard Business School to design a solution that would create a culture of positive change. The result is the Ether Dome Challenge, one of the primary ways the organization stimulates ideas for transformation:

  • This innovation contest invites anyone who works in the system to submit ideas
     
  • The competition challenges hospital staff to think of solutions to pain points they face in their daily work
     
  • Winners are selected by hospital leadership and other contest participants through an online voting system
     
  • HTL provides funding to the winners and helps bring their ideas to fruition
     

Winning projects have included solutions to improve care coordination for patients with multidisciplinary needs and development of algorithms to better match specialists to patients.

How One Winner Brought an Idea to Life
 

One of the simplest and most impactful Ether Dome submissions came from a nurse who wanted to help reduce costs in the cardiac cath lab, but was unable to do so because information about the cost of supplies was not readily available.

  • The project was awarded a micro-grant aimed at educating the cath lab staff about the cost of supplies and how to make more cost-effective decisions
  • The team spent significant time understanding, analyzing, and subsequently reducing the unnecessary use of supplies
  • Supplies in the stock room now have cost-guiding labels, indicating whether something less expensive is available, or if they've selected the least expensive option
  • As a result of this project and its spinoffs, if all recommended changes are adhered to, the potential projected cost savings could total $990,000 annually

Additional Approaches to Stimulate Innovation
 

The Ether Dome Challenge is only one of the ways HTL is creating a culture of innovation at Mass General. Two additional formal programs include:

  • Housestaff Program in Healthcare Innovation, a monthly event to expose interested hospital staff members and physicians to emerging healthcare technologies, care delivery innovation, and implementation science.
  • The Novelline Innovation Speaker Series, which invites leaders in healthcare innovation, design-thinking, and care delivery to share their experiences and lessons learned with members of the Mass General community. This quarterly lecture series provides an opportunity for forward-thinking members of the hospital community to reflect on their own practices and reinvigorate their passion for making healthcare work better.

Innovation Sparks Interest of Some Physicians
 

Engaging physicians in this manner has an added benefit to Mass General, says Soriano. Boston is a hotbed of innovation, and some practitioners are leaving clinical practice to serve as medical officers at entrepreneurial and consulting firms springing up in the area. 

Working on projects through the HTL enables them to engage in innovation, while maintaining their clinical work –"the reason they went into medicine," says Soriano.

Learn More About Innovation
 

Explore ideas and approaches to innovation from other healthcare systems:

Join NEXT Hospital Innovation, co-hosted by Baylor Scott & White Health October 7-9, 2018, in Dallas. Gain insights into how to transform ideas into reality from health systems that have incubated, funded, and built their own innovation solutions.

To sign up, visit the registration page.

Mandy Roth is the innovations editor at HealthLeaders.


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