Baptist Health System: Back to Basics
Written by Amanda Gaines   
Thursday, 01 November 2007
Baptist Health System: Back to Basics - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Shane Spees explains how this healthcare system put its faith-based mission first to improve quality, culture, and performance.
After 85 years of service, Baptist Health System is ready to recharge. For the past three years, Alabama’s largest healthcare system has restructured its business through divestitures, and now, according to CEO Shane Spees, it’s time to reenergize the culture and rebuild the organization.

Baptist Health System: Back to Basics - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Shane Spees, CEO
“Our objective has been to rebuild by establishing a new operating system and developing a new strategic direction for the organization from the ground up,” he said. “Of the three strategic initiatives we’ve laid out, the most important is to get back to basics by reestablishing our commitment to our faith-based mission.”

Step one
One major activity involved in the first objective is giving BHS’s workforce a way to incorporate the faith-based mission into their daily job roles by translating the organization’s core values of integrity, advocacy, resourcefulness, excellence, and compassion into behaviors.

In the first three months of his appointment, Spees traveled across the region, spending time with the medical staff and employees in each of the system’s four hospitals. What he experienced was a workforce with a high level of commitment to BHS’s faith-based mission. The employees’ only frustration: how to express that spiritual commitment to the patients, families, and visitors entering their workplace.

“My challenge to the organization was determining how to demonstrate that commitment to our mission on a daily basis,” he said. “I started by teaming our HR director with our director of church and missions to develop a program to translate those values, which are based on Biblical principles, into everyday actions.”

Spees and his executive team then gathered groups of employees and developed examples of behaviors that demonstrate those values. They integrated their findings into a new performance management process, and the executive team met with all employees and went through performance reviews from the previous year, using the meetings as an opportunity to coach employees.

“We will also provide training sessions throughout the year to ensure we’re adequately explaining what we expect moving forward,” Spees continued. “It’s important to revisit the reason you’re in business, the reason you exist. For us, it’s our faith-based mission.”

Step two
The second of BHS’s strategic initiatives is illustrating a renewed commitment to excellence by improving operations and quality. Within quality, the executive team evaluated the organization’s compliance with CMS core measures, providing a solid foundation from which to handle any measures added to the list in the future.

Since rolling out the initiative almost a year ago, all four of BHS’s hospitals have improved in all CMS-measured areas, with one of the hospitals reaching above 95% compliance in all four categories. “It goes back to understanding your purpose and getting everyone committed to quality while striving for top performance,” Spees said. “We also have monthly, open-forum operating review sessions with the senior management team, with representatives from around the system, to discuss best practices and areas in which we can improve.”

These roundtable reviews and discussions accomplish two things, said Spees. First, it stimulates a little friendly competition among the participants and gives them a clear picture of what is happening around the entire system. Second, it reminds everyone they are part of a system, which also means they are part of a team. “The open forums have been productive in creating better teamwork, enhancing the collegial atmosphere, and helping us stay focused on the right issues,” he said.

Step three
Rounding out BHS’s three-pronged strategic push is an initiative to engage staff and physicians, developing relationships that make them interested in what’s going on with the company as a whole as well as helping them relate it to what they do on an individual basis. “It goes back to the commitment to mission,” Spees said. “If we have an engaged workforce, we’ll certainly be better suited to live out the mission.” To start that process, the executive team made investments in the staff’s development and training. In September, Spees enlisted the help of General Electric to first look at enhancing the organization’s performance management system to set organizational goals and then to translate them to each individual’s job.

“We’re starting by improving the skills of our management team to coach and mentor individuals, which will tie into our previous focus of improving our evaluation system,” Spees explained. “We want to ensure we, as a management team, are capable of best utilizing our merit-based pay system, which means understanding how to evaluate employee performance and to coach employees on the best ways to improve.”

The next phase is to incorporate GE’s leadership and management best practices, building a base from which BHS can begin implementing lean methodologies. The key, said Spees, is to think of lean as a way of thinking, not a technique. “We want to empower all of our employees to take advantage of and identify opportunities to improve processes,” he said. “When you have an empowered workforce, you have a powerful culture.”

Which brings Spees back full circle to his original goal: reenergizing the culture at BHS. “If our mission drives the way we deliver service, it should be unmatched by any of our competitors. By focusing on translating our values into behaviors, we believe our mission will be apparent to all who walk through our doors.”
 
< Previous Story   Next Story >