Alaine Lounsbury, RN, is proud of her nursing team at Downey Medical Center in Southern California. 4 West team members have worked together for decades, forming bonds that have led to high patient satisfaction rates and region-wide recognition.

Lounsbury, nursing assistant clinical director, attributes the team's success to rounding — the practice of engaging frontline workers in face-to-face conversations on the floor and listening to their concerns. Managers who round say it helps build a culture of engagement and dialogue, a key goal of the Labor Management Partnership between Kaiser Permanente and the Partnership unions. 

“It’s about making a connection,” explains Lounsbury, who rounds quarterly on 90-plus staff members using Kaiser Permanente’s Rounding Plus online tool [KP Intranet]. “You want to hear the good with the bad.”

Removing roadblocks

With the tool, managers can use their mobile device to identify, track and escalate issues surfaced during rounding conversations. Program-wide, nearly 10,000 leaders and managers use the program.

At Downey, nurses used rounding conversations to speak up about a workflow issue. Because 4 West is the only unit with nurses qualified to give chemotherapy to adults, it meant staff members sometimes had to leave their department to administer drugs to patients. Their frequent absences meant more work for others.

“I heard them in rounding say, ‘You need to figure this out,’” recalls Lounsbury. She and her team developed new protocols to enable others outside the unit to give the medication. “That was a big satisfier.”

Getting visual

To help her systematically follow up and act on her team’s questions and concerns, Lounsbury uses a colorful poster, called the Stoplight Report, that assigns green, yellow and red colors to track the status of issues.

The poster was conceived by Downey Quality Coordinator Suxian Hu, RN, based on the color-coded reports managers receive through the Rounding Plus program. Last year, all of Downey’s inpatient nursing units began using it.

In 4 West, the poster hangs prominently in the conference room, where everyone can see it.

“Staff members know something is being done,” says Donielle Tresvant, RN, a staff nurse and member of UNAC/UHCP, one of the unions in the Alliance of Health Care Unions. “They know they’re being heard.”

Nurses say the information shared on the poster also fosters team communication and collaboration. “It keeps us updated about things at work and it helps us improve our care by being focused,” says Brianna Schneider, RN, a member of UNAC/UHCP. “It makes for a cohesive atmosphere.”

Let's be real: If everything is important, nothing is important. The prize for us is providing high-quality care and service at an affordable price to our members, patients and communities we serve — and the Focus Areas section of LMPartnership.org is a tool for helping unit-based teams prioritize their work and stay grounded.

What will you find here? Let’s start with the Value Compass. The Focus Areas section has pages that go in depth on each of the four points — Quality, Service, Affordability and Best Place to Work. You also can learn more about topics that are part of the National Agreement, including Total Health and Workplace Safety, Workforce Planning and Development (Workforce of the Future), and Union and KP Growth.

And then two pages are specifically for improving your team’s culture — which will in turn improve performance (we have the stats to prove it). The Join the Team, Be the Change page has tips and tools for improving team communication and engagement, while the Free to Speak page will help you build a Speak Up culture on your team.

Join the team, be the change!

How do you get your unit-based team to be excited about the work? Why would staff members want to be involved? How do you get those quiet people — who you just know have great ideas — to speak up?

Ideas to answer these questions and many more are found on the Join the Team, Be the Change page of the website. You’ll find tips and tools for improving team communication, the first step in getting employees interested and involved.

But it doesn’t stop there. As communication improves, it’s easier for the team to pull together and solve problems — which in turn raises morale and can foster a sense of joy at work. Teams with good communication have more fun, report higher engagement, have better People Pulse scores and are rated higher on the Path to Performance.

And when employees are happy and satisfied with their jobs, our members and patients feel the difference in the care we give. Have fun with your team and make things happen!

If your union is party to the 2015 Coalition National Agreement, you may be eligible to convert your unused banked sick leave to a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) when you retire from Kaiser Permanente. You can use the Sick Leave HRA to help pay for eligible out-of-pocket medical, dental, vision and hearing care expenses on a tax-free basis.    

The Sick Leave HRA gives you a strong incentive to bank your unused sick time and helps ensure that you will have sick time when you need it. This benefit is separate from and in addition to the Retiree Medical HRA established as part of the retiree medical benefits package in the 2015 Coalition National Agreement. 

See the Retirement Programs section of your Summary Plan Description on MyHR for details:

• Select your region.
• When the Benefits by Employee Group page opens, click on View under Summary Plan Description.
• Once the file opens, click on Retirement Programs from the menu on the left.
• Look for details for the Sick Leave Health Reimbursement Account.

If that benefit is not included in your Summary Plan Description, you are not covered by the benefit.

How would you want your mother or grandmother to be treated if she came in for an outpatient appointment at Kaiser Permanente? That’s how we want to treat all of KP’s members. Thousands of unit-based teams are working to make sure every KP member receives top-notch service, from the first phone call to the visit with the care provider to the member’s departure from the facility. Providing great service will make our members’ lives better.

1. Review patient/member satisfaction survey responses with the entire team at weekly meetings and huddles.
2. Connect with patients by making eye contact and addressing patients by name.
3. Keep patients informed by explaining everything you’re doing and all of the next steps.
4. Update patients every 10 to 15 minutes on wait times if there’s a delay.
5. Thank patients and members for choosing Kaiser Permanente for their care. Always ask, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
6. Provide a “wow” experience during a new member’s first visit.
7. Address wait times by trying changes like an “all hands on deck” approach, so when wait times hit a certain threshold, all available staff members drop what they’re doing and help reduce long lines.
8. Make sure phone calls are answered and messages are returned as quickly as possible.
9. Encourage members to sign up for kp.org.
10. If a patient is upset or has had a bad experience, offer a sincere apology and ask, “What can I do to make this better for you?”