The Community Launchpad program draws innovative ideas from employees, rather than seeking outside advice. A bottom-up approach is the only way to succeed in today's market, says one health system CEO.
Healthcare leaders have gotten used to hearing about disruptive innovation, with the notion that nontraditional competitors can eat your lunch and make you pay for it. How can traditional hospitals and health systems compete with outside innovation?
Rather than turning to outside experts, Community Health Network, a health system in Indianapolis, looked inward to answer that question. In 2012 the leadership team created Community Launchpad, an organization within the health system, "to allow a culture of innovation to flourish and become an aspirational goal," says Pete Turner, Community Health Network's vice president of innovation and the man behind the debut of Launchpad.
Bryan Mills |
Launchpad solicits employee participation through an Internet-enabled suggestion and development capability. The system allows staff to submit ideas anytime, but it goes beyond the suggestion box by setting up competitions and by asking employees strategically connected questions to help solve specific problems.
"This is how we can take the word 'innovation' and make it more than just a word on the wall," says Turner. "The word innovation is threaded throughout our strategic plan, but until we came up with this, we struggled with how to activate that word—allowing our employees and the external world to invest in healthcare innovation that will either make Community Health Network a better place to receive care or to practice medicine."
Turner says Community needed better processes, more infrastructure, a mechanism for seed funding, and a safe environment for innovation to flourish. In preparation for launching the program, leaders spent several months looking not only at how healthcare organizations innovate, but also to other industries such as universities and life sciences to help figure out what makes innovation centers successful.
"For one, it starts and stops with the support of the CEO," says Turner. "Fortunately, we have unbending support to push the envelope" from CEO Bryan Mills, a 30-year employee of the organization and its predecessors.
In this year's competition, organizers asked employees to submit any idea, but with special emphasis on improving pricing transparency, making billing statements easier to read, or optimizing the electronic medical record.
Some 800 employees submitted ideas through a "Shark Tank-like competition," Turner says, referencing the popular ABC television reality show, in which a panel of potential investors hears pitches from aspiring entrepreneurs, and can invest in those ideas if they so desire.
Though Community Launchpad's competition has some notable differences from the TV show—there's no browbeating of contestants, for example—there are cash incentives for employees who make the final round of the eight-week program, and they retain the opportunity to share in profits or savings as their idea moves toward a full exploration of its commercial value.
Nine of of the recent submissions were ultimately chosen for Launchpad's innovation pipeline.
Three of the most promising:
- A wearable smart device that alerts caregivers and gives real-time feedback to patients with congestive heart failure as they become symptomatic.
- A mobile work station that provides home care nurses an uncontaminated surface to conduct medical procedures.
- A patented soap dispenser with a built-in digital timer that notifies the user when appropriate hand hygiene is complete.
Regardless of whether the ideas ultimately lead to commercial products or other innovations, Launchpad is also an effective employee engagement tool, says Turner. "This helps make Community Health Network a better place to work and receive care. In the best case, it can generate alternative revenue streams while employees get to test their entrepreneurial spirit."
Launchpad embodies Mills' belief that Community Health will not succeed in a command-and-control fashion.
"Top-down is not an effective way of getting things done," Mills says. "If we had received 50 ideas instead of 800, we probably would have been satisfied. But our hunch was right. With Launchpad, we can put a challenge out there, request and process people's ideas, and then act on them immediately. That gives me confidence we can continue to operate our organization in the local market."
Mills says he personally spends a lot of time trying to figure out how the organization should respond to healthcare trends such as transparency, value-based purchasing, quality metrics, and dealing with local competition.
"But those things don't keep me up at night," he says. "What does is trying to pick a path and be the best communicator I can be. I can only can be effective if people see me as real, credible, and transparent, so my investment in communication is far greater than it has ever been. When it all shakes out, it's really helping 12,000 [employees] focus on a shared vision on a daily basis."
With a dose of entrepreneurship on the side.
Philip Betbeze is the senior leadership editor at HealthLeaders.