Lost in Atlanta

Déjà vu. Atlanta, Georgia…Paul is driving…it’s 100 degrees…and we’re lost…again. Did you know Atlanta has some of the worst traffic in the country, along with Washington, D.C. and almost anywhere in California? There’s one other problem. Every other street in this town is named Peachtree (Avenue, Boulevard, Circle, Street, Lane, Road… you get the picture). Did we mention it was hot? But we digress.

Regional Co-leads’ meeting

We were in Georgia for the quarterly regional co-leads’ meeting hosted by Dawn Bading, Georgia’s VP of HR and Jenee Dixon, national coordinator for the Union Coalition. This two-day meeting involves the 16 co-leads who live the Labor Management Partnership each day in their regions. They are in charge of advancing Partnership and coordinate the launch, training, education, and facilitating of unit-based teams. The meetings offer a chance for co-leads to learn from each other, find out what’s going on in other regions, pick up a good/better/best practice and hear from regional leadership about their current situation and future strategy.

A chance to hear from leaders

At this meeting, Georgia regional President Peter Adruszkiewicz gave an update on the new plan for the region and took questions from the audience. Peter A. (as he likes to be called) told the group that Georgia has an aggressive growth strategy planned over the next few years.

The region wants to encourage members to use Permanente physicians rather than outside physician networks. KP Georgia has already begun to expand medical offices in the greater Atlanta area by utilizing store front and small medical office facilities, making it easier for members to get to their doctors. Currently, members have to fight that Atlantic traffic we talked about, traveling greater distances to see their providers, which makes it less attractive to use Permanente physicians.

In the next three years, the region hopes to open more than 30 of these small offices, each staffed by two to three physicians. The region will concentrate hospital services in two hospitals, instead of the current eighteen to promote the use of Permanente doctors. These plans to expand in the community are great news for the region as well as the union, which will grow its membership as KP attracts more members.

A chance to hear from the front lines

Before and after the co-lead’s meeting, we met with various people to see how Georgia’s UBTs are doing and offer our assistance, if needed. We talked with the LMP Resource Team: Julius Milton, Aleta Stephens, Pat Owens, Ian King, Nina Jones and Heidi Grau, who is currently leading the group along with Frances Monteiro. This is a fantastic group of talented, dedicated folks that are responsible for the hands-on training of unit-based teams throughout the region. They are currently working with the 16 teams re-launched in April and we look forward to hearing about their on-going results.

With the big plans for Georgia laid out by Peter A., we have no doubt that unit-based teams will be the driving force behind the service and quality that will lead to successful expansion in the region.

By the way, did we mention it was hot? Maybe our next stop in the Northwest will be cooler.