There’s quite a bit of excitement around innovation in healthcare, and for good reason. After spending many years – and allocating resources – implementing and optimizing technology, organizations are eager to leverage it to improve care and provide better experiences.
If anyone understands the enthusiasm, it’s Michelle Stansbury, Associate Chief Innovation Officer and VP of IT Applications at Houston Methodist.
“Innovation is exciting – there’s no doubt,” she said during a recent interview. “But change is hard.”
It’s a topic she knows well, having held leadership roles in the space since 2011 – long before innovation reached buzz-word status. And while being able to successfully innovate is undoubtedly a moving target, particularly in the current landscape, there are core principles that can help guide teams in the right direction.
Michelle Stansbury
With any initiative – particularly one involving cutting-edge tools or processes – resistance is pretty much a given, Stansbury noted. That’s where involvement from operational leadership comes into play.
“Before we start something we ask, ‘what is our reason for trying this?’ We’re not changing to make things difficult. We’re changing to make things better,” whether it’s enhancing workflows or improving communications.
And when senior executives are along for the journey, that becomes more evident. For instance, when Houston Methodist rolled out virtual nursing, “our CNO was right there with us, speaking with the nursing staff about how it was going to benefit them and the patients,” she said. Doing so reinforces the idea that it’s not “another innovation or IT project being slammed in.”
Another critical piece in their success, according to Stansbury, was in staffing the Center of Innovation with representatives from across the organization rather than creating new roles. “We didn’t want it to be separate. We needed operations and IT to be very much engaged,” she said, which meant everyone kept their day jobs.
“As we started meeting and talking about the problems we wanted to try to solve through digital innovation, we recognized that we knew exactly what those were, and where we needed to focus,” she noted. As a result, when it came time to implement solutions that had been identified, piloted, and validated, they were able to do it quickly. “All we did was put on our traditional hats to ensure it was successful.”
As organizations advance their use of digital tools, it has become common to see that reflected in innovation goals. But it’s important not to lean too far in one direction, said Stansbury.
Case in point: aiming to eliminate call centers, an idea that her team toyed with. What’s more realistic, she found, is to focus on reducing the number of calls by leveraging voice automation technology. “We’re learning that you can’t completely get rid of things,” she said. “That’s been a journey for all of us to realize that digital tools are great; they can help automate a lot. But there are still some things you have to keep in place, because not everyone is ready for that.”
The challenge for CIOs are other leaders, she added, is in finding the right balance. “We want to meet our patients where they are, even if it’s not where we are.”
Perhaps the most important takeaway is one that applies for any initiative, innovation or not: look beyond healthcare. That philosophy was the basis for the Houston Methodist Tech Hub @ Ion, a “collaboration space for cross-industry partnerships and a living laboratory for digital health technology in the healthcare setting.” The Tech Hub, which includes simulated environments for an inpatient hospital room, an outpatient clinic, and a patient’s home, was modeled after Houston Methodist’s Center for Innovation Technology Hub.
The vision, according to Stansbury, was to “foster an environment where people think out of the box” and can leverage their unique experiences to solve universal problems. “What can we learn from each other? That’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Of course, things don’t always go according to plan, which is why it’s important to be willing to pivot. A few years into the Tech Hub, Stansbury’s team realized that a large portion of the pitches they received didn’t meet the organization’s current needs. And so, they decided to adopt a different approach that would still tap into the diverse Houston community; except this time, the health system would offer a pitch based on a specific problem, and solicit solutions.
In this case, it was developing a digital solution to accurately authenticate employees and read their TST (Tuberculin Skin Test) results remotely, which could result in significant time and cost savings without having to reinvent the entire TB surveillance program. The reverse pitch garnered interest from 175 registrants, with 80 showing up at the information session. “We were extremely impressed with the quality of effort these teams invested and look forward to incorporating the innovation into our current program,” Stansbury wrote in a LinkedIn post. “With the success of this initial pilot, we intend to replicate the reverse pitch model with a new problem statement year after year.”
The hope is that more ideas will come forward that can help boost efficiency, experience, and outcomes – not just for Houston Methodist, but across healthcare. If the reverse pitch was any indication, that goal isn’t out of reach, according to Stansbury, who believes a fire has been ignited when it comes to innovation.
“Everyone we’ve seen is appreciative to be on the forefront of these new technologies and to be engaged,” she said. “They want to be the first to try a solution, because they recognize the value it can bring.”
Even more importantly, “people understand that we do this for a very important reason. It’s not just to have fun with a new tool – it’s about truly solving problems.”
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