Innovation and Transformation That Drive Value
Venue: Frontiers of health services management

A review OF the key initiatives that have driven the evolution and performance results of system innovation programs at MedStar Health and OSF Health.qaCare the two organizations highlighted in the feature articles of this issue of Frontiers of Health Services Management reveals three consistent messages:1. Innovation is fundamental to an organization's commitment to leadership in healthcare. At both MedStar Health and OSF Healthcare, innovation is a fundamental part of the organizations' commitment to leading evolution in healthcare for the organizations, for the patients they serve, and for the field at large. Innovation is integrated with each organization's mission.2. Innovation builds on an established culture of organizational peformance improvement. The specific innovation enterprises and programs at MedStar and OSF are extensions of a culture of performance that is foundational to both organizations and that has been in existence for decades. Building on this culture accelerated the enthusiasm of their leaders to participate fully and to involve their teams at every level of the organization.3. Quality and value, integrated with transformation programs, start at the highest level. At both MedStar and OSF, quality and value drive the endeavor, and the organizations recognize that further organizational coordination will help them measure the results. Leadership's commitment to innovation sets the stage for success.The feature articles advance our field by sharing practical approaches that can be adapted in other organizations. I highlight here the components that healthcare leaders might find most beneficial, based on my experience as CEO of the Health Employer Exchange, an organization of health systems dedicated to scaling and improving the Value Based Care Model we built at the UCLA Institute for Innovation in Health, using the Innovation/Transformation Approach and Methodology we designed to replicate it.THE OPPORTUNITY AND THE CHALLENGESamet and Smith thoughtfully frame innovation as a "central strategy for clinical and business operations" at MedStar Health; there, it is a required "mind set." In describing the MedStar Innovation Institute (MI2) they focus on the "consistent execution" and "incremental improvement" that drive the centrality of results from the outset, but they also differentiate innovation as a "different way of thinking a shifting of the frame that makes an innovation feel novel and creates the sensation of surprise (usually pleasant) in the person experiencing it for the first time." The MedStar working definition of innovation, noted by Samet and Smith, deserves review by all innovation institutes: "Innovation is a novel and discontinuously different product, service, process, organizational structure, or business model that adds substantive value, and its origin is based in a different way of seeing, understanding, and thinking about something in the world." Being clear about what innovation is not is also important at MedStar. The organization's mind set of innovation, and an innovation institute's responsibility "to foster an environment that encourages an optimistic and empowering mind set," empower leaders and others on the team to "invent the future" that is, to "try it. tweak and iterate."In her feature article, Conger starts her discussion of innovation at OSF HealthCare with the tight alignment of innovation with an organization's mission, the patients the organization serves, the staff who collaborate in delivering care, and the "transformation taking place in their communities." If this transformation is understood, she suggests, silos will be broken down; appropriate integration will take place; care will be improved; and responsible, appropriate change will be sustained. The OSF innovation model was therefore initiated with three overarching components: internal innovation, partnering with external entities, and validating innovation through simulation.