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| Vince Pillari from the Blood Bank |
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| “Ree’s Creations” |
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| Tanya Cournoyer and Rita Caputo from Primary Care |
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| Lisa Geneva from Employee Health at "Lisa's Soap Kitchen" |
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| Genevieve Rentas from the Pediatric Clinic, with her daughter and their handmade wreaths |
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| The traditional Thanksgiving meal |
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| Placard Commemorating the composition of "Jingle Bells" in Medford, Massachusetts |
When a patient calls to book an appointment in the hospital, and it's your job to schedule it, but you can't--because there aren't any slots open, or too few to align with the patient's schedule, or because of some system problem--it's frustrating.
A group of SHARE members in Central Scheduling has been building a process to eliminate those frustrations, and help patients get the care they need. These schedulers were recently recognized at the Innovation Celebration, where Katie Warren, a scheduler in the 855-UMass MD pod, and Tony Le, the lead scheduler in the Primary Care pod, explained where their best ideas come from, and how their two areas have worked together to turn problems into opportunities.
Lauren George, another architect of the system, explains her personal process. She says she keeps a stack of idea cards on her desk. "It makes sense for keeping track of this kind of thing. I found if I wrote down an idea on any other ordinary scrap of paper, it was too easy to mix up with all of the other notes I take." If, after she hangs up with a patient, she has some concern that the call didn't go as well as it could, or the patient didn't get the appointment time that they wanted, she pulls a blank card and writes down the problem. Then she places the card in a designated spot on her desk. And it sits there, for maybe a couple of days, with the other problems that she's jotted down.
While Lauren takes calls and goes about her work, the cards rest on her desk. It's a busy job, with a constant flow of conversations, and plenty of interruptions. Still, in the background, her thoughts percolate. When she can, she'll stop to look back at the cards. She might come to find trends among the problems. Or, the day after a tough call, when the tension has subsided and she can look at the problem with fresh eyes, she might hit on an insight about its root cause. Lauren will write down her new analysis, and move the card along to another spot on her desk, where it sits for maybe a couple more days.
When she assesses the problem again, she finds she often has an idea that could reduce the chances of having to deal with that problem again. She writes down her idea. And then the card gets pinned to the department's idea board. "And it's not all for issues with scheduling patients," Lauren points out. "We use it for whatever ideas we have about work. We've got regular Throwback Thursday emails that now recognize birthdays in the department, and other things like that, which have come out of our idea system."
For the schedulers, this is a process that's working. They haven't perfected the scheduling system. But they certainly aren't looking at each other across their idea board huddles, wondering if someone else has thought of something. They're ticking off solutions to problems, one by one. And they're constantly developing a plan for addressing the rest. Not to mention finding ways to have some fun at work in the meanwhile. We're impressed, and very happy to see them recognized.
Look for more SHARE members at the next Innovation Celebration, including a focus on the Primary Care Idea System, on Tuesday, November 17th from Noon-1pm in the University Campus Cafeteria.
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Katie Warren and Tony Le
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| Röntgen and his beard |
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| Radiology Technologists on the University Campus |
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| Radiology staff enjoying lunch provided by supervisor Marcia Amaral in celebration of rad tech week. (photo: RT Jess Joslyn) |
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| Deb Church, Bobbi-Jo Lewis, and Joann Shoup |
Memorial: Wednesday, November 11th, 1:45 am - 1:15 pm in the hospital cafeteria
370 Main Street: Thursday, November 12th, Noon - 1:00 pm in the 5th floor conference room
University: Friday, November 13th, 11:45 am - 1:15 pm in the hospital cafeteria
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Did you know that over one hundred SHARE members work as certified Respiratory Therapists? They are specialists in lungs and hearts and emergency care. They often manage life support for patients in the ED and ICU. They keep countless airways clear, and for that, we're very thankful.  |
SHARE Respiratory Therapists on the Memorial Campus
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SHARE Respiratory Therapists on the University Campus
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LEAF-PEEPING
October is Medical Ultrasound Awareness Month. SHARE is happy to recognize our Ultrasound Technologists.When UMass and then Memorial employees voted to form the SHARE union, the main goal was participation. People wanted a say in decisions that affect them at work.
With a merger, and with healthcare changing rapidly all around us since, there have been many decisions being made that affect SHARE members. As a new union and in the 18 years since those votes, we’ve checked off most of “the biggies” from our list:
SHARE members wanted to make raises predictable, with raises every year, and a salary system that was fair, transparent, and moved people up to grade max over time.
SHARE members wanted to hold onto the benefits they had, in spite of the merger, especially:
Health insurance, keeping the 85%/15% premium split the state workers had had.
A defined benefit pension.
SHARE members wanted to land safely in new jobs when there were layoffs, especially in the highly uncertain times of the early merger. And we wanted to feel that seniority was valued equally no matter which campus you came from.
SHARE members from Memorial and UMass wanted to have the same policies across campuses, without going to the lowest-common-denominators among those policies. And we wanted to continually improve on these policies.
We all know that there’s plenty more we can do to improve even further on those goals. Still, our achievements have been significant and hard-won. Congratulations to all of us for sticking together when our union has faced hard times and hard negotiations.
Changing How it Feels to Come to Work
While we have steadily, persistently ticked the goals off our list, there’s one important nut that we haven’t cracked: We really want to change how it feels to come to work every day.
We want to save lives and improve patient health to the best of our ability.
We want patients’ experience -- from making an appointment to paying the bill – to go smoothly and give the patients what they need.
We want to have fun at work
We want to be able brag to our neighbors that we work at UMass Memorial, to have the respect of our peers and leaders, and to leave work consistently with our heads held high.
SHARE wants to focus on that problem -- how to re-imagine and improve our entire work culture -- in our next contract negotiations.
Many forces combine to cause our work to be stressful and frustrating:
Constant change, and financial pressure that leads to “doing more with less”
Work systems that are complicated and wasteful rather than clear and efficient
An old culture of “command and control,” and a “shame and blame” approach to problems that make positive teamwork tough to establish
Changing how it feels to come to work is not a simple goal. We have lots to figure out, and we may need to try several approaches before we figure out what works.
We Need Your Ideas!
We hope that all SHARE members will take part in this conversation as we prepare to tackle this difficult set of problems. We are starting with a survey for all SHARE members to get your thoughts, questions, concerns, and ideas.
We will negotiate about raises and benefits too – so there will be a lot going on in this coming year. We will set up lunch-time SHARE information meetings across the hospital’s campuses in the new year. You can also contact your SHARE reps and organizers through the SHARE office any time.
And of course, we will post updates here on this blog. Stay tuned…
I really like that front-line staff do the improvement work because they know their work best, and that they have time away from their regular duties for it.
I love it: fix a bad process, don't shame and blame an employee.
They see a problem is an opportunity for improvement -- that's a positive outlook that I'd love to see more of at UMass Memorial.
NATIONAL MAMMOGRAPHY DAY
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| Weather is coming |
MOOSE! SHARE members are now using ICD-10 coding guidelines in our hospital. The new codes allow for far greater precision, including for those patients receiving care as a result of “Burn due to water-skis on fire, initial encounter (V91.07XA),” or even less-likely conditions. At the time of this publication, our research team has not yet uncovered a code for “Incident with urban moose in Worcester County,” although we hear that a moose has been recently seen on our local streets. Drive safe. Questions or suggestions about this website? Email kirk.davis@theshareunion.org
