INNOVATION

Building a Structure to “Sprint Toward Innovation”

Several years ago, CoxHealth, like many of its health system peers, was struggling to innovate, and to do so quickly.

Leaders took the pulse of employees through a quick survey, and Director of Innovation Scott Rogers admits the results were “ugly,” with many employees believing the Springfield, Missouri-based organization — while excelling in delivering clinical care — was lagging behind the competition and lacking the resources and know-how to move into new areas of business exploration. “It was a huge slap in the face,” he said.

So senior executives decided to launch an innovation accelerator, which enabled managers and staff throughout the system to give rapid, one-minute pitches for new ideas that would get CoxHealth back on track. New ideas and concepts started flooding in, from all corners of the organization, Rogers said, but there was no way of quickly putting them into practice.

“We had a lot of ideation, but we were struggling with implementation,” he noted. “If you’ve ever played the game ‘Oregon Trail,’ we had a wagonload of equipment and supplies, but then we got dysentery. We couldn’t get our ideas out there. We were fast to concept, slow to market.”

That eventually led the six-hospital nonprofit to install a carefully designed implementation process to rapidly deploy new projects in three months or less. Six years after that “ugly” employee survey, the provider is churning out one care-model reinvention after another, including a new wait-at-home offering that is getting rave reviews from patients. Marketing is playing a key role in the transformation, too, because of its close connection to the consumer and the retailization of the health care experience.

“Having marketing at the innovation table to serve as the voice of the customer — and ensure that their feedback is incorporated throughout the process — is mission-critical,” said Jann Holland, vice president of marketing and corporate communications. “There’s shiny-new-object innovation and then there’s strategically driven innovation, designed to improve processes and efficiency, drive down costs, improve employee retention and, most importantly, elevate patient satisfaction.”

Speeding along IN-90

CoxHealth was able to accelerate its innovation journey using the IN-90 process, which was originally developed in collaboration with the American Hospital Association. This system is designed to help health systems tackle any sort of pain point — from operational to patient care — and produce solutions that are ready to launch in just 90 days. Elements include instilling an innovation mindset across the enterprise, building a framework and rolling out an agile implementation process. 

Armed with this knowledge, the system aimed to address the issue of wait times at urgent care and walk-in clinics through a digital/virtual wait solution. Patient interviews and market research confirmed patients desired such a service, and that it would be worth the investment. Using this new process, marketing leadership and the innovation team methodically considered and addressed the following factors:

• Desirability of the concept: What do health care consumers want?
• Feasibility of the product: What can the health system build or create to meet those needs?
• Viability of its execution: What can the organization profitably deliver?

To answer these questions, they crafted a series of maps to explore pluses and minuses that might arise. In the desirability domain, for instance, they drew an audience map to brainstorm who they were targeting, who interacts with the users, and who might influence individuals to try the digital solution. A journey map was also developed to flesh out patients’ needs during walk-in visits and problems they might encounter along the way.

This is all structured around an agile action plan that CoxHealth has deployed using two-week “sprints” to reach the next step. Each innovation project typically starts on the 1st or 16th of the month, with evaluations conducted on the 15th and last day on the calendar. For instance, the “desirability” step might start with two weeks to organize, gather metrics and evaluate assumptions. Weeks later, the final “feasibility sprint” involves having employees modify and finalize the product over a two-week period.

“At this point in the process we have a potentially viable solution that we’re ready to trial with the customer,” said Holland. “We didn’t feel like every process improvement initiative required outside consultants. When appropriate, we used our 12,000  employees who are also customers, and they loved engaging in this process.”

For example, when project leaders were trying to land on a title for their check-in app, they simply went down to the cafeteria and started asking for feedback.

“In 45 minutes, we had input from over 100 employees and visitors on what the naming convention would be,” noted Holland. “Easy enough, and it didn’t cost us a dime. It was fun, actually, and people felt as if they were engaged and part of the process.”

Go Live

The “Save My Spot” service launched to the public in early 2018, just 97 days after the idea was selected. The number of patients using it has steadily climbed each month, resulting in an 18-minute faster door-to-door time than the standard urgent care center, with 95 percent of respondents indicating they’d recommend the service to a friend.

Rogers said they want to stay aggressive and are currently pursuing nine different innovation projects, with more on the way. Leaders have ambitious innovation goals for the short and long-term, which they fleshed out through market research and environmental scanning.

According to Rogers, important lessons learned by the innovation team were the need to build an accountability structure for the initiative and ensure that the ideas selected for pilot projects are linked to CoxHealth’s strategic plan. Holland added that you must establish a culture of innovation with leadership engagement, and start small with one project at a time.

 

This article features interviews with: 

Jann Holland
Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications
CoxHealth
Springfield, Missouri

Scott Rogers
System Director of Innovation
CoxHealth
Springfield, Missouri