Background

Denver's Regional Pharmacy unit-based team is like night and day from the now-defunct Regional Pharmacy steering committee, which it replaced.

The committee, team members say, was too large and wound up breeding distrust and miscommunication between union and management.

The new UBT's hard-earned trust and collaboration has already born dramatic results, with their projects improving customer service and affordability. In one notable achievement, the team's modification of the process that pharmacists use to attach their electronic signature to prescriptions has saved technicians hours of research, freeing them up to spend more time with patients.

Since that success, the regional team has become a model, taking on a sponsoring role for the smaller, pharmacy-specific UBTs launched in the region in late October 2007.

Advice to other teams:

"The biggest thing is if you view your situation as a failure you'll never succeed," Petricich says. "When something is not working that's where your opportunity is. Don't be afraid to change something if it's not working."

Improving the workplace:

"I like the focus on efficiencies and waste because it ends up translating to a better work environment for employees," Petricich says. "Especially with this project, we found the technicians were doing redundant work that did not provide job satisfaction. So taking that away allowed for more time with patients, which is what many would rather be doing."