Innovating for Impact: 4 Stages for Creating Value in Healthcare

In a session at the American College of Healthcare Executives’ 2013 Congress on Healthcare Leadership on March 13 in Chicago, Molly J. Coyle, MD, chief innovation officer for UCLA Health System, discussed the importance of innovation in healthcare, including the growing role of innovation officers and innovation centers in many of the delivery systems around the country.

What is innovation?

Dr. Coyle kicked off her presentation by exploring the idea of innovation, explaining that innovation from the economist’s point of view is more than just “invention.” Innovation is the phase beyond that “when you turn that pilot idea into something that has impact, that spreads and makes a big difference.” She added that in healthcare there has been a lot of invention, especially in regard to clinical treatments, but “innovation in business and service models has lagged.”

She explained that the difference between invention and innovation is important for healthcare providers to understand because they often assume innovation in healthcare means coming up with de novo ideas to improve care. Instead, she said, innovation officers and centers don’t have to invent “everything over again.” Rather, the role of the officer and center should be to take existing ideas and diffuse them throughout their organization.

What projects should have priority?

UCLA’s innovation life cycle has four distinct stages, according to Dr. Coyle. The cycle serves as a guide for identifying, distributing and diffusing innovation through the organization.

1. Let strategy guide innovation. Dr. Coyle cautioned against allowing “a thousand flowers to bloom,” or simply putting resources toward any and all innovation. Instead, innovation that is invested in should be guided by a health system’s strategy. Healthcare innovators should ask: “What are the innovations that are going to drive the strategy faster?” she said.

2. Find a target opportunity. To determine a specific opportunity for innovation, consider strategy as well as the potential impact of the innovation across the organization. “You don’t want to make something very small 5 percent better,” said Dr. Coyle.

3. Identify and design innovations to achieve improvements in your target opportunity. During this stage, it’s important for health systems to realize “you don’t have to do it [alone] within your four walls,” Dr. Coyle said. Health systems should test ideas from other systems and partner with others, including other health systems, payors, investors and developers. “Beg, borrow and steal shamelessly,” she said.

4. Charter innovation. During this stage, innovation is piloted and, if successful, spread throughout the organization.

What’s next for healthcare innovation?
While innovation efforts will vary based on each health system’s strategy, Dr. Coyle said standardizing care and narrowing variation are areas that are ripe for innovation, particularly because of their impact on the value of care.

More Articles From the ACHE Congress:

Why Healthcare Leaders Cannot Afford to Ignore "Greening" Anymore
Executive Compensation: 9 Things Every Hospital CEO Should Know
Becoming a Virtuous Healthcare Organization: It Starts With Avoiding "Blamestorming"

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