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Health Care Innovation Think Tank

Health Care Innovation Think Tank

In October 2005 St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Wisconsin School of Nursing sponsored a “Think Tank” Meeting on Innovation in Health Care Service Delivery for a 2 day event.

During that event two groups of representatives were invited to come together to discuss how to get more innovation into service delivery in Health Care. The session was arraigned and facilitated by Paul Plsek who was searching for a heterogeneous group of participants ranging from the medical and nursing backgrounds accompanied by a small group of Innovation Specialists from multiple industries. These participants were:

  • Aleta Belletete recently retired from Bank One Corporation where she held the title of First Vice President and Chief Quality Officer for the Commercial Bank. She has served six years on the board of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

  • Peter Coughlan, PhD, is from IDEO, the fabled California design firm whose clients include Apple, Proctor & Gamble, and many other well-known companies. He has worked with several health care organizations in the US and UK on service design issues.

  • Dale S. Deardorff, PhD, is a program manager in the Laser and Electro-Optical Systems (LEOS) division of Boeing. Dale did his PhD on innovation in organizations and now runs an intensive innovation "workshop" process for Boeing, its clients, and its suppliers where he takes a design or management team with a specific challenge and helps them develop never-before-thought-of solutions and plans.

  • April Dorcas, MBA, is Strategic Marketing Executive, Women's Healthcare, Global Marketing, GE Healthcare. GE was recently named #4 on a list of the Most Innovative Companies in the World, as compiled by the Boston Consulting Group based on surveys of senior executives in 68 countries.

  • Robin Karol, PhD, is the CEO of the Product Development and Management Association, the leading professional society for product and service designers. Her organization sponsors the leading conferences and seminars on innovative design and has also compiled a body of knowledge specification for professional designers.

  • Jim Rasche, AIA, ACHA, is a Principal Health Care Planner and Designer at Kahler Slater, a nationally recognized multidisciplinary architectural design firm. He is a health care team leader who has dedicated his career to partnering with visionary clients to transform patient, family, staff and physician experiences by using an innovative design approach.

  • Sam Stern, EdD., is Dean of the College of Education at Oregon State University. Sam's research and writing are concerned with creativity in education and business. Sam has taught in the Department of Systems Science at Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Department of Economics at Harvard University, and in the MBA Program at the Athens Laboratory of Business Administration in Greece.

  • David Tanner, PhD, is a former DuPont company R&D Director and founding Director, DuPont Center for Creativity & Innovation. He has a Ph.D. in polymer science, was President of the American Creativity Association, executive director deBono’s International Creative Forum, and author of Total Creativity in Business & Industry – Roadmap to Building a More Innovative Organization.

During the sessions Leland Kaiser described “Innovation” as a way of listening – listening to what is trying to happen – evoking it from the Quantum void.” Every participant brought something unique to the event and in the discussions that Dr. Kaiser inspired it was discussed that the ground rules for the dialog would require the need to take all of the lines out of the previous mental models and formats and put it all together – then to spin it and redraw the desired system and all of its patterns.

The medical, nursing, administrative and innovation specialists were able to work together creating and defining many new efforts which will be explored in 2006-2007.

My notes from the event will be made available as an attachment:

Chicago Think Tank Notes – Click here to view

My personal thanks to the following participants for making us feel at home in the Health Care family working towards innovation solutions that “Change the quality of our Thinking”!

  • Chris Baker, RN, PhD, APRN, BC is a Clinical Nurse Specialist for Nursing Outcomes and Director of Clinical Outcomes Management and Decision Support for St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin.

  • Emily Barey, RN, MSN, is the Director of Nursing Informatics for EPIC Systems Corporation and works closely with hospitals across the country to develop and implement electronic medical record systems.

  • Joan Beglinger, RN, MSN, MBA, FACHE, FAAN is the Vice President for Patient Care Services of St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Prior to pursuing administrative work, she was a clinical nurse specialist in critical care.

  • Barb Boushon, RN, BSN, is a director for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). In that role, she has led learning collaborative with health care organizations and government entities seeking to improve care for patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, depression, and HIV/AIDS disease.

  • Frank D. Byrne, MD, MMM, CPE, FACPE, FACHE is President of St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Dr. Byrne practiced pulmonary and critical care medicine prior to venturing into administrative work.

  • Marilyn Chow, RN, DNSc, FAAN, is Vice President, Patient Care Services, Kaiser Permanente. She is also the Program Director, RWJ Executive Nurse Fellows Program. Marilyn is the At-Large nursing representative on the JCAHO, and also is a member of the Joint Commission Resources Board.

  • Connie Curran, EdD, RN, FAAN, is the Executive Director of C-Change, an organization dedicated to the eradication of cancer, co-chaired by former President George Bush and Barbara Bush. She is also the editor of the publication Nursing Economics.

  • Debra Geier, RN, ADN is a practicing clinical nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin.

  • Martyn Howgill, MA, is the first Executive Director of The Institute for Medical Technology Innovation, which he helped launch in the summer of 2004.

  • Leland R. Kaiser, Ph.D, is founder and President of Kaiser Consulting, a health care consulting firm, and co-founder of the Kaiser Institute, an advanced fellowship program for health professionals.

  • Lynne Maher, a nurse by training, is Head of Service Transformation at the NHS Institute of Innovation and Improvement in Warwick, England where she is responsible for developing innovation processes for the National Health Service of England.

  • Katharyn A. May, RN, DNSc, FAAN is Professor and Dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Margaret McClure, RN, EdD, FAAN, is a professor at New York University, and the former president of the American Academy of Nursing, who has done extensive work on a variety of nursing issues.

  • Mary P. Nix, MS is currently a Project Officer at the Center for Outcomes and Evidence within the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

  • Paul Plsek is the author of Creativity, Innovation, and Quality (Quality Press, 1997), and an internationally recognized consultant on innovation and improvement in complex organizations, whose practice focuses mainly on health care organization.

  • Marie Sinioris, MPH, is CEO of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership, an emerging authority on the development of healthcare leadership to advance the nation’s health care.

  • Pat Rutherford, RN, MS, is Vice President of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) where, among other responsibilities, she directs IHI’s Transforming Care at the Bedside collaborative.

  • Debbie Waite, J.D. is President of Waite Association Consulting,

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