Beautiful scenery, friendly folks and real UBT progress in the Northwest. 

Our trip to the Northwest brought us to one of the most beautiful cities we have visited: Portland, Oregon. There is a great deal of water, mountains, trees and, best of all, friendly people. 

Our first meeting was with the COO from the Northwest Region, Mark Enger. Mark was very emphatic about Unit Based Teams being the platform for how KP does business. He holds himself and his staff accountable for making this happen. 

The Northwest Region has launched all of their teams at Sunnyside hospital and has begun rolling them out in the facilities throughout the region.

Mandi Marchek, medical office manager, from the Rockwood Medical Office, explained the work of the facility’s teams which were launched earlier this year. The teams are all using their RIM training and performing PDSA cycles. They post their AIM statement and progress on the department bulletin board.  This gives all employees a monthly update and a visual on progress made and is a “good” practice from our viewpoint.  Further, the management co-leads post the team’s current statistics on their office doors for anyone on the team to examine on all shifts. 

We also met with co-leads from several teams at the Cascade Park Medical Office and Sunnyside Hospital. Among the departments we talked to were representatives from Pharmacy, Dental, Internal Medicine, Med-Surg and Family Practice. 

Regional Co-Leads Susan Ross-Bell and Kate Pingo have done an outstanding job on the roll out plan and have a specific process of education and facilitation for the teams. Some tips we picked up in the Northwest:

• The importance of teams selecting their own co-leads
•  Using huddles on a regular basis  

Dan let the GPS head us to an airport in Washington instead of Portland. A few miles into it--that is, about 20--we figured it out! 

*Pictured above:

Top:

• Ed Vrooman, Unit Based Team Resource Specialist, SEIU Local 49
• Heather Thompson, Unit Based Team Resource Specialist, UFCW Local 555 
• Lolita Burnette, Team Development Consultant for Unit Based Teams
• Esther Haberman,  UBT Resource Specialist, OFNHP
• Sherri Austin, Team Development Consultant for Unit Based Teams  

Bottom:

• Maureen "Moe" Fox, UBT Support Team, OFNHP
• Bruce Corkum, Unit Based Team Resource Specialist, OFNHP
• Melissa Jackson, Project Manager, Unit-Based Team Deployment
• Susan Ross-Bell, Unit-Based Team Implementation Medical Operations, Kaiser Permanente Northwest
• Kate Pingo, National Coordinator, Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions