South Bay UBT Fair: Pride in improving the health of the community

Teammates Melanie Taner and Shawna Gateau

I recently participated in a UBT fair celebrating the work of the the South Bay Medical Center’s high performing unit based teams in Southern California. I came away acutely impressed by the contribution employees are making to health of the community through unit-based teams. I was also struck by how much richer that commitment made their work lives.

These fairs are an indicator of deep pride in the changing culture throughout the organization as day by day, frontline employees, managers, and physicians are collaborating to achieve better outcomes for the members of the Kaiser Permanente.

I could sense the camaraderie among the staff At South Bay Medical Center. In fact, I felt as though the dream that I experienced while visiting Jonkoping, Sweden in 2007 had come alive at South Bay -- inherent hierarchies had given way to truly collaborative work environments. Fred Tinamensen, RN at South Bay was part of our union delegation to Jonkoping. He listened with tears in his eyes to the frontline workers there talk about their work environment where everyone came to work for one purpose: to improve care and service for the patients. Now, Fred is helping to lead these efforts at his own hospital!

The internal medicine team’s attendance turn around

I met with Shawna Gateau, a medical assistant, and her co-worker, Melanie Tanner, a receptionist. They both worked in Internal Medicine. They came to the realization that service to the members could only improve if they could resolve a problem they all agreed needed to change: attendance.

The members of the team discussed the root causes of their 5.9/employee/per year average last- minute call offs. They helped each other out with simple reminders about getting to work. They also worked with their managers to improve granting of time off requests.

In a one month test of change, the team reduced last-minute call offs to an average of only 2.9/employee/year. They plan to maintain this result by constant monitoring and support by one another.

Perhaps the best unintended outcome of this experience was expressed by Shawna and Melanie, who became friends through this process of engaging one another on improved attendance. Once hey got to know each, they realized they were neighbors. So, now they carpool to work, saving gas, saving time and sharing friendship during the difficult slog through Los Angles traffic each day.

The Cardiology team fights cancer!

I met with another team who worked in Internal Medicine Subspecialties. Francine Alexander, the Department Director, Naida Harewood, Senior LVN, and Barbara Washington, EKG/Cardiology Tech shared how they execute successfully on proactive office encounters.

In this case, when a member comes in for an EKG study, the technician also checks the patient’s electronic medical record to see if he or she is up to date on preventive screenings.

As a result, the department’s ranking on colorectal screening went from eighth, of 13 in the region, to fourth!

I asked the team how they made this leap in improvement, and whether or not it was difficult to add a primary care function to their array of specialty services.

Naida indicated that it seemed difficult at first. Barbara then interjected that once they realized that they had an opportunity to save lives, the work became a joy to learn. As Barbara said, “we had a discussion about preventive health, and that’s what got us involved.”

Making it all worthwhile

Barbara, a 22-year employee of Kaiser Permanente, described how she felt about her career. “I feel wonderful because after all these years of doing EKGs, I had an opportunity to learn new ideas and new work. How many places can you say provide that kind of opportunity?”

I left the UBT fair thinking exactly that. People go to work every day over a lifetime, and when it is all said and done, what is it that they want from their career? They earn and deserve real economic security while at work and in retirement. They also earn and deserve something that is equally, if not more important – the ability to feel that they have contributed to the betterment of their community over the course of their working life.

I am so proud of our Coalition unions as we lead with our commitment to improve the health of the members of Kaiser Permanente. In so doing, we help create the path for frontline employees to have the best experience in their work life. 

A last note: many thanks to Larry Rick, Physician Assistant and UNAC leader who was a big part of organizing the fair and my link to the event.