Becker's Hospital Review

STRATEGY AND INNOVATION 10 Hospital Innovation Centers Think Outside the Box to Solve Healthcare's Biggest Problems By Shannon Barnet W hen people think of creative professions, jobs in the healthcare industry are probably not the first to come to mind. Between surgical checklists, precise medical billing codes and rigid protocols for everything from placing a catheter to donning personal protective gear, health- care may seem like a prison for the cre- ative mind. In reality, creativity and imagination are crucial to treating patients. We see the results of innovative ideas in healthcare every single day. For instance, thinking about patient safety in new, unexpected ways is what led to the Institute of Medicine's landmark "To Err is Human" report, published in 1999. Testing and combining drugs and substances in ways never done before is one way to create new treatments and vac- cines. And some outside- the-box thinking is what brought Toyota's lean style of management to health- care. In the past, many healthcare innovations emerged from the work of scientists and research- ers, which were published in academic and medical journals. Over time, they were incorporated into the actual practices of clini- cians. Increasingly, howev- er, hospitals are launching innovation centers of their own to work with research- ers and design thinkers to tackle the biggest chal- lenges in clinical quali- ty, patient safety, health information technology, healthcare costs, billing and payment, and access to care. "Healthcare systems — like systems in other industries have come to a point where they are really try- ing to develop novel, targeted and cost-ef- fective solutions to challenges," says Peter Fleischut, MD, chief innovation officer at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and asso- ciate professor of anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. "I think over time, it's only natural for systems to want to organize that activity and align all of the different responsibilities of innovation, which is what we are seeing happen now." The rise of innovation centers Since the concept is still gaining trac- tion among hospitals, many innovation centers are only a few years old. According to data published by e Commonwealth Fund in April 2015, many innovation centers were launched in 2010 — the same year the Affordable Care Act was passed — and quite a few more have launched since. New York City-based NewYork-Pres- byterian Hospital, for example, collabo- rated with an accelerator called Blueprint Health to open a dedicated innovation space last summer. As chief innovation of- ficer, Dr. Fleischut oversees innovation at NewYork-Presbyterian. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital wasn't the only one to expand its innova- tion efforts last year; Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital, a community hospital serving the Washington, D.C. area, also launched an innovation center in 2014. Sibley's 3,000-square foot center — known affectionately as the Hub — is in the same space that used to house the hospital's paper medical records before the widespread use of EHRs. e center is overseen by Nick Dawson, executive director of innovation at Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital. The Innovation Hub is a 3,000 square foot facility embedded within Sibley Memorial Hospital. It is dedicated to promoting new ways of thinking about today's healthcare challenges.

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