Want to show your new employees that you respect them and you’re committed to making things better? Social work manager Kevin Curtis used University of Utah Health’s value improvement methodology to confront one of the most common challenges in health care—getting patients from the ED to a bed. Using concepts from lean and six sigma, Curtis identified waste, prioritized root causes, and fostered his team’s shared purpose in getting patients quickly to care.

Organizing around patient needs isn’t easy. It involves changing traditional reporting relationships and patterns of care delivery. Over nearly 20 years, UNI’s HOME Program has refined how the team works together to deliver better care for some of our most vulnerable patients. Now the nation is learning from these frontline leaders.

Trust. That’s what we want. We want to earn and keep the trust of every patient. We want them to trust that we provide the best possible medical care. But more than that, we want them to trust that we will respond to their needs, coordinate our efforts, and provide them with available options. We want them to trust that we will answer our phones, explain their treatment, and value their time. The exceptional patient experience is an enterprise-wide system designed to deliver a singular output: trust. And, this enterprise-wide system is built on trusting our providers and our teams.

Scope is a powerful tool when changing practice. Rather than trying to revamp in one large swoop, scoping an improvement down to palatable stages can overcome resistance and lead to meaningful results for future improvement cycles. Although new improvers may feel this approach delays impact, repeated improvement cycles often lead to sustained care transformation. Dr. Theophilus Owan demonstrated this principle in his quest to improve value by standardizing anti-thrombotic medications given to patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

Not even the most gifted leader can lead change alone. No one person can come up with the strategy, communicate across the organization, eliminate all the barriers, and manage dozens of change initiatives. In order for transformation to succeed, you need a guiding coalition.

Instead of allowing external performance measures to define our success, we define success by reliably delivering the best possible care with empathy, coordination, and efficiency at the lowest possible cost.

Translating strategic priorities into everyday execution across a large, complex enterprise might seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Our Operational Plan is a blueprint that combines processes, tools, knowledge, and skills to deliver on these priorities.

What does healthcare really cost to deliver? And does the cost really make a difference in patients’ health and experience? The University of Utah tackled this problem with the creation of Value Driven Outcomes (VDO), a program to enable local clinical decision makers to lead improvements in care delivery relative to cost, quality, and service.

The following case study examines a new core competency in delivering value at a system level. At the University of Utah, leaders created integrated oncology teams organized for the patient. Collapsing historical silos and empowering front-line leaders grew adaptive teams that offered better value to cancer patients.

What is the strongest predictor of an effective solution? It’s not the size of the committee or the length of the brainstorming session. The best predictor of successful solutions is how well the problem is understood. Investing time in defining, investigating and analyzing the problem can lead to transformative solutions.