When one of her teams is able to leap over the roadblocks in its path with the grace of an Olympic hurdler, Charisse Lewis finds herself out of a job.

As a UBT consultant for the Baldwin Park Medical Center in Southern California, it’s an occupational hazard that she looks forward to—again and again. Like coaches everywhere, she enjoys seeing her teams take what they’ve learned and make it their own.

“I do a lot of mentoring,” says Lewis, who acts as coach, counselor and head cheerleader for her facility’s 68 unit-based teams, nudging them past milestones on the Path to Performance, the five-stage “growth chart” UBTs use to measure success. “I’m teaching teams how to function without me.”

For example, she recently helped a team of critical care nurses advance from Level 1 to Level 4 by using an array of strategies from team-building activities to involving union representatives. Another team advanced to Level 4 in part because she coached the management co-lead, who was new to Kaiser Permanente, in how to manage effectively in a partnership culture.

A team to help teams

Lewis doesn’t work alone. She’s part of Baldwin Park’s UBT Strategy Group, a SWAT team of union members and managers who target at-risk teams. That team’s goal is to help UBTs excel so they can drive performance to provide the best service, quality, affordability and job satisfaction. Low-performing teams, says Lewis, tend to suffer from poor communication, paltry trust and a lack of transparency.

“It’s hard to get past that stuff,” she says. “They flounder there. They don’t trust each other and it’s hard to be a team.”

Part of Lewis’s talent in helping turn teams around is her skill in assessing stumbling blocks and getting teams engaged with the right resources. She draws on her experience as an LMP coordinator, trainer and improvement advisor to nuture her teams.

“I don’t like to stare at that elephant in the room,” says Lewis. “If it’s a contract issue, then we need a contract specialist. If it’s an HR issue, let’s make sure that HR is involved. I like to address the problem and get the team’s leaders involved, from both labor and management.”

Tops in Southern California

Her approach speaks for itself. Baldwin Park has the highest percentage of high-performing teams in Southern California: Of 68 teams at Baldwin Park, 88 percent are at Levels 4 and 5 on the Path to Performance.

Her passion, integrity and ability to help others overcome their differences and work together to improve member and patient care has earned her praise from LMP leaders throughout Southern California—but Lewis, in turn, credits her success to the many people who support her efforts.

“I have the support of the regional LMP office, and I have a strong support system at the medical center,” she says. “It makes my job easier.”

When it comes to metrics, even the best teams can get muddled.

At such times, a good team realizes it needs help—that it’s time to ask for assistance from someone with specialized skills. In the Northwest region, teams can turn to Ed Vrooman.

His enviable strength? An ability to crunch numbers, connect the dots and break down the complexity of the data so that unit-based teams get the information they need to do their work.

“It’s easy for teams to fall into analysis paralysis, where they dissect every data point. I work with them to know the why and the what,” says Vrooman, who started as a part-time phlebotomist 18 years ago at Portland’s now-long-gone Bess Kaiser Hospital. Today, he does double duty as a union partnership representative (UPR) for the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions—he’s a member of SEIU Local 49—and as an improvement advisor.

A broad perspective

His atypical career path has given him an unusual outlook. In 2003, Vrooman took an extended leave of absence to work for Local 49, helping organize KP employees and other health care workers. After returning to KP, he became a labor partner and brought the coalition’s interests to the building of the new Westside hospital and other major regional projects.

“Partnership has allowed me to touch nearly every function within this organization,” Vrooman says. Working on the large initiatives got him more intrigued with the data side of the house—and led to his current position, which gives him an opportunity to use his skill with data and analytics. 

When he heard from the region’s UBT consultants that teams didn’t have the data they needed to work on projects, Vrooman became—along with the data analytics department and health plan leaders—a driving force in the creation of the region’s scorecards for teams. The STATIT scorecards (named after the electronic system that hosts them) enable teams to see their goals online and how they line up with the regional and PSP goals.

Co-leads’ gathering

Every year, Vrooman, along with the other two UPRs in the region—Bruce Corkum, RN, an OFNHP/ONA member, and Mariah Rouse of UFCW Local 555—present information on regional goals and budgets in one of the quarterly Steward Councils, which bring together the region’s UBT union co-leads and representatives from its four partnership unions. For the meeting on regional goals, the management co-leads are invited as well, providing a chance for team leaders to learn together how their teams can have an impact.

When he’s working directly with a team, Vrooman mentors and coaches its members on using improvement tools, from understanding the fundamentals such as SMART goals and entering projects into UBT Tracker to more advanced tools like process mapping. He asks his team members what they need to be successful.

“You don’t need a title to be a leader,” Vrooman tells them. “You lead from where you stand.”

The Family Practice unit-based team at the Sunset Medical Office in the Northwest was thrilled that its work to get members to sign up on kp.org was a success. But team members quickly grew dismayed when the onslaught of new signups had an adverse effect on patients’ experience.

The challenge began in 2014, when the team launched several projects to increase the number of Kaiser Permanente members signed up on kp.org, knowing that people who use kp.org usually give KP higher satisfaction scores. The office is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, near one of Intel’s campuses. Intel offers Kaiser Permanente as a health plan option, so the effort to get more people online made perfect sense.

But, on the flip side, the increased number of messages coming in through kp.org wound up increasing turnaround times for return emails and phone calls.

More than two-thirds on kp.org

The department now receives between 450 to 650 email messages per week. Seventy-one percent of its patients—29,000 members—are signed up on kp.org. The team sought to improve its turnaround time on messages by reducing the number of times staff members and physicians touched each message. Instead of multiple people working a message, each one is now triaged one time by either an LPN or RN. At the same time, the team decreased its time spent on messages per week from 13.6 hours to 10.9 hours.

Ed Vrooman, an improvement advisor and union partnership representative, coached team members on how to test and implement their improvements.

“We learned how to use process mapping, so we could identify where the holes were in how we were approaching the work,” says Eliseo Olvera, the assistant department administrator and the UBT’s management co-lead. “Ed knew where we could get the data we needed and help us understand it, so we could do the work.”

Vrooman also introduced the team to the 6S tool—sort, simplify, set in order, sweep, shine, standardize—to improve its work processes. The team broke into different workgroups and each group identified tests of change. Some of the ideas were abandoned, some were refined and adopted, and some still are being adapted.

Staying on track

“I tended to focus too much on the information and the numbers,” says Rikki Shene, a licensed practical nurse and SEIU Local 49 member who is the team’s union co-lead. “Ed helped keep us organized and simplified the data so that we could keep moving forward and accomplish something in our 45-minute UBT meetings.”

Vrooman’s role in the team has been critical for the team. He attends the co-lead planning sessions and UBT meetings. He stays in the background until needed—and then he speaks up.

“He’s part of our community,” says Olvera. “His expertise with data has been critical. It’s a gift.”

Colorado

Unit-based teams are hitting their stride, with 190 out of 261 teams reaching a Level 4 or 5 on the five-point Path to Performance. Teams are engaged in several types of projects, including those that save the organization money. The region will see a financial savings of $1.85 million this year through the 175 affordability projects of UBTs. The five UBT consultants in the region are coaching teams impacted by regional restructuring and helping those teams rebound quickly. Teams also are focusing on workplace safety, patient safety and HEDIS measures (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set).

Georgia

Starting in May and running through December 2015, Georgia medical centers are conducting an experiment. This region-wide test involves using greeters to usher in members. During the trial period, 15 greeters will make the member feel welcomed and convey the message they are important to Kaiser Permanente. Greeters also will answer questions, escort members to their appointments, maintain waiting rooms, ensure wheelchairs are available and welcome members with a smile. “They will provide a concierge-type member experience,” says Elizabeth Ramsey, the Georgia region’s senior manager of loyalty and retention.

Hawaii

The Hawaii region recently re-set its 57 unit-based teams’ scores on the Path to Performance to Level 1. Three consultants—two also are registered nurses and one is a project manager—will help teams quickly advance as they meet such core requirements as sponsor training. The region is unique in that, for now, one union (Hawaii Nurses Association/OPEIU Local 50) is in the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, while other unions are not. Although that can be challenging, consultants say teams still focus on the patient and want to do improvement work. “We help each other work through obstacles with our teams and understand the data,” says Lisa Kane, UBT consultant and project manager.

Mid-Atlantic States

In February, when home health orders came in to Health Information Management Services Northern Virginia, the average turnaround time was 4.4 days. By creating red folders for the orders, adding a cover sheet that says “stat” and date stamping the order as soon as it arrives, the team cut turnaround time to three days by April 2015—even as the number of orders went up from 673 in February to 747 in April. “This was important to the workflow, because when home health agencies called to follow up on the orders it interrupted our work,” says LaShawnda Powell, a senior health information management assistant in Woodbridge, Virginia, and member of OPEIU Local 2. “We have determined that our new process is successful and we’ve adopted it.” 

Northern California

Last year, unit-based team consultants and union partnership representatives formed a regional UBT to work on issues related to consistency and accountability for Northern California’s 1,300 frontline teams. Now the group has established three subgroups to review the 2015 National Agreement, which includes new provisions for UBTs. Each subgroup has a distinct focus area: sponsorship, UBT validation and assessment, and tools to support contract expectations. The subgroups will develop recommendations for review by a committee of labor members and management representatives. The regional co-leads will submit final recommendations to the regional LMP Leadership Council by year’s end.

Northwest

UBT Resource Team members have been busy refining the region’s new process for assessing teams on the Path to Performance. Co-leads and sponsors of 415 unit-based teams in the Northwest work with their consultant to ensure each team advances or sustains high performance throughout the year. Improvement Advisors help co-leads create action plans and provide direct training to move teams along or refer them to the appropriate subject matter experts. A majority of teams at Levels 2 and 3 will advance to high performance within the next 90 days due in large part to the work of the UBT Resource Team.

Southern California

Playing games at work usually is considered taboo. But that’s exactly how a group of regional UBT staff members spent a recent afternoon when they learned to play the “Leading Innovation Game.” Created by Kaiser Permanente’s Innovation and Advanced Technology team, the board game is designed to help employees overcome challenges that can doom the best ideas. Starting this fall, regional UBT staff will train team co-leads and sponsors, who will share the game with unit-based teams at their facilities. “Most teams come up with great ideas but they aren’t always aware of potential pitfalls,” says Rosalyn Evans, UBT practice leader for Southern California. “This board game gives them hands-on experience to develop innovation in a risk-free environment.”

You say your unit-based team has reached Level 5 on the Path to Performance? Great, everyone take the rest of the week off!

Your UBT is stuck at Level 1 and has been for years? Just hide in a dark corner and hope no one notices.

Not so fast.

Teams soar. Teams stumble. And we need them all to stay in the game.

Unit-based teams are Kaiser Permanente’s platform for improving performance. They’re also the union coalition’s instrument for amplifying workers’ voices in the workplace. All of which has paid off for KP members and patients, through UBTs’ efforts to improve quality, service and affordability. None of which is easy for teams to pull off.

Enter union partnership representatives and UBT consultants. They are recruited from frontline positions in union and management, so they know firsthand what it takes to deliver high-quality health care. They also receive special training that enables them to coach and mentor unit-based teams.

Our leaders knew teams would need such support. But it’s a balancing act. The tightrope for these folks is to gradually build the skills and confidence among team members, then step back at the right time so teams can fly on their own.

Few of us can truly go it alone. We all benefit from coaching—someone to hold up a mirror and offer frank advice (diplomatically delivered!) on how to improve in our jobs. A consultant’s most important skills are listening and observing. Those are skills we’d all do well to improve.