It's official: KP Southern California has launched its much-anticipated Targeted Unit-Based Teams.

On Feb. 27 some 580 frontline workers, managers and physicians came together in Pasadena for an all-day training designed to give them the tools and support needed to implement their teams.

At the same time, more than 200 people from Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center in the Northwest region met to get their first glimpse of the Unit-Based Team vision and how they might apply it at their facility.

UBTs are viewed as critical to KP's success and, in accordance with the 2005 National Agreement, by 2010 departments across the program will fully deploy UBTs to boost performance and involve all employees in decisions affecting their day-to-day work.

Targeted Unit-Based Teams (T-UBTs) differ from existing LMP teams because they are held accountable for meeting specific goals, which they will set themselves. The teams, with the exception of the largest units, will include all employees in decision making.

The region's top health plan, hospital, union, and medical group leaders kicked off the Southern California event.

LMP stronger than ever in SCAL

"This is an enormous project and we are going to do this," said Walter Allen, executive director of OPEIU Local 30, before being drowned out by applause from the audience.

The Labor Management Partnership in SCAL is stronger than it ever has ever been, said Jeffrey Weisz, MD, executive director of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, as he referred to the values that guide Kaiser Permanente.

"I don't care if you are a physician, a nurse or an environmental services worker, the key to anything today is integrity and respect, because that builds trust," he said.

While KP is a good organization, Dr. Weisz continued, it must become even better to contend in today's fiercely competitive market by improving patient care—for instance, being more compassionate and ensuring timely appointments.

The Partnership offered Kaiser Permanente a strategic advantage in delivering top-quality care, said Benjamin Chu, MD, regional president for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals.

"The health plan, medical group and workforce are all integrated into one, devoted to taking care of our patients," Dr. Chu said. "It's an amazing system that people all over the country are trying to replicate."

Teams in each medical center

Many team leads were tapped at the last minute, and while they were optimistic about their ability to meet the challenge of these ground-breaking teams, many were hungry for information.

"I'm really excited about this," said Emmanuelle Julien-Granatur, a department administrator at the West LA Medical Center. "We can always improve the way we do our work. I think we need to get our projects started faster to get the data we need."

For the initial pilot, each medical center in SCAL will have up to 10 teams addressing as many as four strategic areas: operating room throughput; impatient service and utilization; adult primary care service improvement; and a locally selected area of performance improvement.

The team's co-leads will be working with all team members to improve in their targeted areas.

The need for change was a theme reiterated throughout the day, whether the discussion was on how to improve performance, service quality or access to health care on a national level.

"Until and unless we are willing to talk about the fundamental challenges that exist in our country that affect us day to day, we are not going to succeed," said John August, executive director of the Union Coalition. "Today Kaiser Permanente has got to step up to new challenges and new competition."

KP cannot afford to lose members and can't afford to be anything but the best, August said, which is why the notion of unit-based teams can't be viewed as "just another project."

Each medical center will have its own UBT kickoff. Other KP regions are slated to roll out their first teams in the coming weeks and months.

NW discusses path from DPCs to UBTs

In the Northwest region, for example, employees and managers set aside half of their annual two-day Department Partnership Committees' meeting Feb. 27-28 to discuss how they will morph their DPCs into UBTs. The Department Partnership Committees are representative teams—rather than the UBT model, in which all team members participate—but otherwise operate in a similar fashion to the UBT vision.

Sunnyside's employees are, with the rest of the region, grappling with significant fiscal and competitive pressures. Just the same, employees who commented after the UBT presentation definitely seemed to "get it."

"I don't see this as a huge change, but rather the next iteration of where we are going," said Trish Weaver, a med/surg nurse educator at Sunnyside. "This gives us a baseline and a tool to be followed, so everybody knows at every level what role they play to get us where we need to go."

You can follow the progress of SCAL's T-UBT roll-out on Inside KP@Southern California (KP intranet).