UBTs

If you haven’t heard already, you will be hearing a great deal about “Quality Ratings of Medicare Advantage Plans.”

The most significant feature of these quality ratings is the potential for bonuses to be paid to health plans that meet high quality standards. Medicare Advantage accounts for 10% of all Kaiser Permanente business. So what is this all about? Why should frontline Kaiser Permanente union members, physicians, and managers care about this?

As we travel to the different regions we are constantly meeting unit-based teams that are truly high performing. These teams have made the commitment to do things differently and get everyone involved in the decision making process. But how does a team know when they have hit and are sustaining their peak performance? Is it the same from department to department? Facility to facility? Region to region?

Déjà vu. Atlanta, Georgia…Paul is driving…it’s 100 degrees…and we’re lost…again. Did you know Atlanta has some of the worst traffic in the country, along with Washington, D.C. and almost anywhere in California? There’s one other problem. Every other street in this town is named Peachtree (Avenue, Boulevard, Circle, Street, Lane, Road… you get the picture). Did we mention it was hot? But we digress.

Senior Veep Barb Grimm recently caught up with Donna Lynne, president of the Colorado region. They talked about the success of a Colorado optical team and the Baseline clinic team in providing superior service. And they discussed what the region's teams have learned that can help other UBTs.

The health care reform law has a name: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (HR 3590). What’s in a name? In this case, a great deal. 

Our Value Compass and health care reform; it’s a great fit. 

We were off again in March to the Peachtree State: Georgia. KP Georgia employees are some of the friendliest you’ll meet. First stop was “Coffee and Conversation” with Regional President Peter Andruszkiewicz (also known as “Peter A.”) and Dr. Rob Schreiner, the executive medical director of the region.

Dr. Shawn Dufford, medical director of peri-operative services in Colorado, knows about teams. Through his performance improvement work in the OR, he has learned that every member of the team needs a voice to make sure the patient’s interests are paramount. In this guest blog, Dr. Dufford, gives advice on engaging other physicians UBTs and where he would like to see the Partnership in ten years.

A very painful example of the tragic results when an organization does not learn from its mistakes comes from a case study by the Harvard Business School of NASA.  The study examined the NASA chain of command following the 2003 destruction of the space shuttle Columbia during reentry. At that time, NASA was a very top-down organization. Bringing up problems was a career killer. In fact, many NASA employees felt that they had to prove that there was a problem, before it was safe to even raise questions.

Team-based care is the path to the future, Jack Cochran, MD, executive director of the Permanente Federation, told Sunday’s morning plenary session.

Delegates at the “We’re With You” workshop engaged in a freewheeling discussion with four frontline leaders whose main message was summed up in the workshop name. 

Shawn Dufford, MD, director of peri-operative services in the Colorado region; Walter Allen, executive director of OPEIU Local 30;  Martha Gilmore, medical group administrator at the South San Francisco Medical Center, and Howard Fullman, MD, medical director of the West LA Medical Center, shared practical tips with participants—many of them UBT co-leads. 

Dr.