Health care workers’ first obligation is “do no harm”— to see that the members and patients in our care suffer no injury or further illness. Unit-based teams across Kaiser Permanente launch hundreds of projects every year to improve patient safety. These tips can your guide your team in a patient safety improvement project and help ensure that KP is the safest place to get and to give care.

1. Wash your hands often, and in accordance with local policies and procedures.
2. Speak up if you observe a drift from safe practice. As the saying goes, “If you see something, say something!”
3. Make sure patients (or family members) understand their diagnosis and plan of care. Have them describe, in their own words, their condition, what they need to do next and why that’s important.
4. Label specimens accurately, completely and legibly.
5. When administering high-alert medications have two people separately check specific steps of the process. For example, a pharmacist calculates dosage, prepares a syringe and compares the product to the order; then a nurse independently does the same and compares the results.
6. Use tools such as SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) and clear language like “Safety Check” to identify a hazard, if someone is uncertain and does not feel it’s safe for the patient to proceed. 
7. Keep yourself free from injury so you can keep your patients free from harm.

Who hasn’t experienced the frustration of a long wait to get a prescription filled or a lab test done, or to see a physician who’s running behind schedule? To help keep Kaiser Permanente patients and members happy, many unit-based teams are tackling this issue and finding ways to reduce wait times.

1. Raise awareness of the problem by sharing data about the department’s wait times and patient satisfaction scores with unit-based team members.
2. Help your co-workers understand it is everyone’s responsibility to be attentive to members who have been waiting for long periods of time — and recognize co-workers who do this well.
3. Inform patients of delays by having the receptionist let them know if a physician is running late.
4. Provide members and patients who have been waiting for extended periods of time with individual attention and updated information by “rounding” in the waiting area.
5. Put a focus on wait times by posting patient arrival times on exam room doors or having pharmacists call out the wait time in the pharmacy.
6. Utilize 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.
7. Consider shifting employees’ schedules to ensure adequate staffing during peak hours and at the start of the day, so you don't fall behind from the beginning.*
8. Promote alternatives to in-person visits such as prescription refills by mail or email, phone or video consultations with doctors.
9. Rethink who does what if part of the reason for long wait times is that only employees in particular job category are allowed to do a certain task.*
10. Create a quiet zone in pharmacies to reduce distractions for the primary filling technician.

*  Consult with local unions to ensure proposed changes are in line with the contracts.

All improvement requires making change — and change can be difficult. These practices are culled from Kaiser Permanente’s Organizational Effectiveness consultants and from unit-based teams that have moved through change successfully, developing new processes, transitioning to new leadership, etc. These tips are meant to support UBT co-leads and team members as they manage change — and the resistance that often comes with it.

For unit-based team co-leads and sponsors: Identify and manage resistance

• Clearly communicate reasons for the change.
• Make it safe to voice concerns throughout the change process.
• Identify team members mostly likely to resist the change and give them key roles.
• Involve naysayers as early and as often as possible to minimize grumbling.

For all UBT members: Assess the effects of the change and enlist support

• Develop a common understanding of the change, getting everyone’s point of view:  Ask, "What’s being done now and what will be done differently?"
• Engage everyone affected, including physicians, members of other departments and your team sponsor.
• Identify specific enablers and barriers to implementation — areas that will require greater attention.
• Allow team members to identify solutions and make decisions that affect them most.

Celebrate short-term successes — and acknowledge failures

• After each test of change, recognize and reward contributing team members at huddles and meetings. Use these small wins to increase credibility and keep the momentum going.
• Accept failures — and talk about what can be learned from them.

When we help Kaiser Permanente membership grow, we help make KP stronger and our jobs more secure. One of the best ways to grow KP membership is to provide great service to every member we serve — especially to new members during their first interactions with Kaiser Permanente. Here are some ways to enhance the member experience and keep new members with KP for the long haul.Engage the entire unit-based team in providing a “wow” experience during a new member’s first visit.

1. Use tools like the New Member Identifier in Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect® to flag new members and give them a little extra TLC during their visit.
2. Provide new members with information packets (with, for example, important phone numbers, a facility map, pharmacy hours) that will help them access all of KP’s services.
3. Make every member’s visit special with a warm welcome. Take time to answer questions about KP, or even offer a mini-tour of the facility before or after an appointment.
4. Follow up on first visits with a thank-you card or survey to find out how the visit went and how it could be improved.
5. Sign members up for kp.org while they are waiting in the reception area or exam room. Take time to explain the benefits of using kp.org—for instance, the ability to refi prescriptions by mail or manage a child’s care online.
6. Create a friendly competition in your department to see how many members a staffer can get to try mail-order refill or KP.org.
7. Use service-improvement tools that help your team connect with members. Check with your UBT consultant or regional LMP Council for suggestions.
8. Improve access to KP services by working with your team to reduce the time members must wait for appointments.
9. Help new members get to know their care providers by providing a physician biography or a brief introduction about the nurse or pharmacist they will be seeing that day.

Kaiser Permanente has set a goal to reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020, compared to its 2008 levels. Unit-based teams can play a part in greening our environment and saving money. Involve your team in tests of change around recycling or reducing supply waste.

1. Coordinate with other departments, such as EVS, materials management or procurement and supply, on green tests of change — or “embed” a member of one of these departments in your UBT.
2. Work with your facility’s waste-hauling vendors to find out what types of materials and supplies can be recycled, and place recycling bins strategically in cafeterias and near exits.
3. Cut down on costly, wasteful single-use medical devices or supplies as part of performance improvement efforts.
4. EVS teams: Switch to environmentally friendly cleaning products and supplies.
5. Invite your teammates to shop for locally sourced, organic fruits and vegetables at the nearest KP weekly farmer’s market.
6. Host a monthly healthy salad bar, like the UBT at San Diego’s Positive Choice clinic did in its successful effort to improve attendance.
7. Replace thirsty plants for drought-tolerant alternatives, as several teams in Northern and Southern California have done.
8. Go paperless: Don’t print out agendas and documents; send them out via email or show on a projector instead.
9. Recruit a champion in your department to be on the lookout for new opportunities and coach others on greening their workplace.

Beep! Beep! Beep! The electronic sound of Cary Brown’s alarm clock wakes him at 5 a.m.

The Kaiser Permanente member rises to shower and make breakfast, careful not to disturb his sleeping wife, Elissa, who is recovering at home after surgery on a broken leg at the Woodland Hills Medical Center in Southern California.

On top of completing household chores, the retired Hollywood TV director spends his day making sure Elissa is comfortable and pain-free.

The experience has taken a toll on him.

“The hours of staying awake and the repetitive nature of it—and not having any life at all outside of home—is very difficult,” says Brown, who worked on the hit TV series Doogie Howser, M.D.

Now he’s part of an ambitious effort by the Southern California region to enhance support for caregivers, who play a vital role helping to heal and comfort patients outside the hospital. By reducing caregivers’ social isolation, integrating them into the hospital care team and addressing their health needs, regional leaders hope to improve patient safety and quality in the home.

‘Human-centered design’

Under the initiative, frontline workers, physicians and managers are partnering with KP members and their families to design the ideal in-home care experience for patients and caregivers. Participants are using a creative approach to problem solving known as human-centered design, which starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with solutions that are customized to their needs.

“It’s a way to engage the folks who are most affected from day one,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Clinical Operations in Southern California. “No program that I could ever design will be as good as one that had the people who are most affected design it with us. It’s about empathy and understanding.”

Human-centered design is also an ideal tool for unit-based teams to use on performance improvement projects. It delivers on the fundamental concept of the Value Compass—to put the member and patient at the center of decision making—and both frontline workers and Labor Management Partnership leaders, from management and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, have been supporting the caregiver project.

Reducing the overwhelm factor

At a meeting in Pasadena, the participants—patients and caregivers, KP employees and physicians—gathered in small groups to share personal tales and draw storyboards to help identify barriers, come up with potential solutions and provide insights to regional Home Health leaders.

Shawna Wallace, a senior physical therapist for Home Health and member of UNAC/UHCP, said the experience was eye-opening.

“I’ve gone into homes where caregivers really care about their loved ones, and they are extremely overwhelmed,” she said. “This is a great opportunity for us to see where we can make better programs for our caregivers and members in these scenarios.”

Brown is hopeful that the approach will give caregivers—and their loved ones—the emotional and physical support they need to thrive.

“If you take care of the family as a unit,” Brown says, “you make it possible for each individual in the family to be better.”