Healthcare providers are subject to broad and ongoing changes in regulations for how we provide care, how we document care provided to patients, and how we get paid for the services we provide. The impact to UT Health Physicians is no exception. Our practice has experienced sweeping federal and state changes that have radically changed our environment. For us to continue to excel in meeting our mission in this increasingly complex and competitive industry, it is crucial that we have alignment and clarity throughout every level of our complex organization.
What does that really mean? Ultimately, what we must do is to build a working environment and culture around how to best perform and achieve our mission in an industry that is heavily regulated and continually changing, which is very hard to do for any organization and in particular an academic health center like UT Health San Antonio.
One of the best practices to achieve success in managing change and improving culture is to have a shared philosophy and clear understanding of expectations, goals, values, structure and what is needed to better perform and respond to change timelier. To help simplify our process and approach, we have developed what we’re calling the “UT Health Continuous Improvement System.” To demonstrate what this means in a way that may be more easily understood, we’ve created a graphic – a pyramid – that reflects how we align our approach to change, why and how we are making the change, and to benefit whom in a more integrated way. The UT Health Continuous Improvement System pyramid, shown below, serves as a visual concept to help simplify knowledge of who we serve, who we are and how we will differentiate ourselves through the UT Healthier Way.
Patients are our priority. They are always at the top of our mind and likewise, are placed at the pinnacle of our pyramid. We serve patients through a dedicated mission, vision and core values. The next layer of the pyramid demonstrates ways we will grow and show our value to patients and payors alike.
And ultimately we will execute strategies to achieve our goals through leadership development, IT, financial management, team development, Lean principles, and the philosophy of relationship-centered care. The pyramid also shows us how what it will take for us to drive successful population health management programs and support the demand to achieve value-based performance.
The UT Health Continuous Improvement System, laid out in the graphic below, will entail a series of educational experiences for our employees designed to improve our patient capacity. To date, we have developed several rigorous, evidence-based training programs that focus on enhancing our ability to manage populations and better serve patients with higher quality outcomes.
The UT Health Continuous Improvement System concept is a critical transformation strategy that is designed to introduce our teams to concepts of population health but also to go beyond by providing the opportunity for individual clinics and units to develop meaningful, team-based care relationships.
We will continue to educate all at UT Health Physicians on this concept and will highlight and detail aspects of our efforts to continually improve our practice with the ultimate goal of providing the highest quality outcomes for patients in the most efficient way we can.
“The fundamental task of management is to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.” – Peter Drucker
