Kaiser Permanente medical assistant Abelene Cerezo-Kirtley used to fear computers, but not anymore.

Inspired by her 84-year-old father, she took a pilot digital fluency course that made her more comfortable with technology, empowering her to provide better care for her patients—and her family.

As her father’s health advocate, she used her training to create a spreadsheet to track his insulin injections, consolidated his medical records on an iPad, and presented it to his physician.

“He asked me, ‘Are you a doctor?’” Cerezo-Kirtley says. “I said, ‘No, I’m a medical assistant.’ It made me feel 10 feet tall, and I’m only 4-foot-10.”

The new online program is free to all members of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions through the Ben Hudnall Memorial Trust, the SEIU UHW-West & Joint Employer Education Fund, and National Workforce Planning and Development. Visit kpcareerplanning.org, the Ben Hudnall Memorial Trust or the SEIU UHW-West & Joint Employer Education Fund websites to sign up.

A workforce development strategy

The digital fluency program, which takes four to six hours to complete, helps employees understand the role of technology in health care and know where to find additional learning resources. It’s part of a larger workforce strategy to encourage employees to upgrade their skills, advance their careers and meet future health care challenges.

“Digital fluency is one of four critical skills we’ve identified that Kaiser Permanente employees need to meet the changing demands of health care,” says Monica Morris, National Workforce Planning and Development director. “Whether you work in a medical center, clinic or office, we encourage employees to take the digital fluency program.”

Gaining skills builds confidence

Cerezo-Kirtley, now studying American Sign Language to better serve patients who are deaf or hard of hearing, has constantly upgraded her skills during her 19 years as a medical assistant at Kaiser Permanente’s Sacramento Medical Center. Her father, a retired airline mechanic who earned a master’s degree, modeled lifelong learning, and KP has enabled it through negotiated benefits such as tuition reimbursement. Cerezo-Kirtley, a member of SEIU-UHW, jumped at the chance to improve her digital fluency.

“The digital fluency program gave me the confidence to keep wanting to learn more,” says Cerezo-Kirtley. “It helped me care better for my family and my patients.”

Her manager, Jennifer Henson, RN, agrees. “It’s important to support our staff to advance themselves, which in turn promotes better health within the company,” says Henson, who has used tuition reimbursement herself to earn her nursing degree and is now working toward a master’s degree.

Workforce Planning and Development

Key accomplishments

• Program enrollments in Kaiser Permanente’s two education trusts grew from about 3,000 in 2007 to nearly 62,000 in 2016. 
• Tuition reimbursement course applications nearly tripled, from less than 20,000 in 2008 to more than 57,000 in 2016, largely benefiting members of unions in the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
• Critical skills training launched in June 2017 with a Digital Fluency pilot program for more than 2,000 employees.

Going forward

• A top priority will be addressing the impact of economic, social and technological changes on care delivery and future KP staffing models. (Learn more at kpworkforce.org.)

Workplace Safety

Key accomplishments

• Since program inception in 2001, KP’s injury rate has been reduced by 69 percent.
• Injuries associated with patient handling and/or mobilization have decreased by 32 percent since 2011.
• The program-wide workplace safety strategy was strengthened in 2016, based on the National Safety Council’s model.

Going forward

• The strengthened safety strategy will be implemented, with the goal of closing the gap between KP’s injury rate and the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusted injury rate for health care.

Total Health

Key accomplishments

• More than 76,000 employees have taken the Total Health Assessment (THA) since 2014.
• Ninety percent of eligible employees completed their recommended health screenings in 2014 and 2015, earning a $40 million payout under the Total Health Incentive Plan.
• More than 3,000 UBT health and safety champions helped teams across the organization conduct 1,756 wellness projects in 2016—a 45 percent increase from 2015.

Going forward

• New awareness campaigns, including one focusing on prediabetes education, will inform and empower employees to take charge of their own health and wellness.

Joint Marketing and Growth

Key accomplishments

• Helped secure more than $108 million in revenue for Kaiser Permanente in 2016.
• Supported the 20-year growth in the number of employees represented by a union in the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, from 57,000 to 116,000, and in Kaiser Foundation Health Plan membership, from 7.4 million members to 11.8 million. 
• Since 2012, mobilized 51 union ambassadors who attended more than 300 community events and engaged more than 70,000 KP members and potential members—many of them unionized—increasing community knowledge and understanding of KP.

Going forward

• Through the expansion of health plan membership, support job security and the continued growth of the coalition.

Attendance 

Key accomplishments

• Enhanced time-off benefits to provide incentives for appropriate use of sick leave.
• Developed the Time-Off Request Tracking System to provide greater flexibility and responsiveness in managing planned time off.
• Achieved 21 percent fewer lost workdays in high-performing UBTs. 

Going forward 

• Attendance data, systems and results will continue to be assessed and improved.

Amazon. Facebook. Uber. Count the ways that technology has changed the way people shop, share information, get around—and the way work is done in those industries. Now add health care to that list.

That was the message of the 2016 Work of the Future Conference in November, where 200 Kaiser Permanente managers and workers looked at how health care is changing, and how management and labor can collaboratively shape those changes at KP.

Industry and union leaders shared emerging workforce trends and practices. They also praised KP and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions’ approach to performance improvement, problem solving and workforce development.

“Kaiser and the union coalition have nailed it when it comes to workforce training, workforce planning and making sure we're preparing for the future,” said Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. “The collaborative approach really shines when we talk about training, workforce development and finding ways to help workers ladder up in their careers.”

Shared wisdom

With the help of unit-based teams, health care innovation has brought patients better and faster treatment at KP, said Nirav Shah, MD, senior vice president of clinical operations for the Southern California region. For instance, KP hip replacement patients often walk off the operating table, go home without spending a night in the hospital and get nursing care and physical therapy at home. “Radical transparency, shared data and the wisdom of unit-based teams” are essential to making such changes work, he said.

Skills for success

KP and union workforce planners shared how workers can prepare for more changes coming to health care by mastering four critical skills:

• consumer focus
• digital fluency
• collaboration
• process improvement

These skills are among the new training programs, previewed at the conference, to be offered to coalition union-represented workers in 2017 (learn more). Digital fluency, for instance, covers mobile devices, applications and their impact on health care. Kaiser Permanente and the coalition unions, working in partnership, have given KP workers a head start in at least two of the other critical skills—collaboration and process improvement.

Learning from others

Conference participants also learned from the experience of other organizations. DTE Energy, a Detroit-based public utility, worked with its unions to avoid layoffs even during the Great Recession, said Diane Antishin, DTE Energy’s vice president of HR Operations.

Michael Langford, president of Utility Workers Union of America, described his union’s training and apprenticeship programs, which have helped his members nationally adapt to changes in their industry.

As with our work in the Labor Management Partnership, interest-based bargaining helped both parties achieve their goals.

“If you come in with positional arguments you’ll never get it done,” said Langford. “But if you can get to what the underlying problem is, you can solve it.”