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Open innovation facilitates department-wide engagement in quality improvement: experience from the Massachusetts General Hospital

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Abstract

Background

Quality improvement (QI) initiatives commonly originate ‘top-down’ from senior leadership, as staff engagement is often sporadic. We describe our experience with a technology-enabled open innovation contest to encourage participation from multiple stakeholders in a Department of Surgery (DoS) to solicit ideas for QI. We aimed to stimulate engagement and to assist DoS leadership in prioritizing QI initiatives.

Methods

Observational study of a process improvement. The process had five phases: anonymous online submission of ideas by frontline staff; anonymous online crowd-voting to rank ideas on a scale whether the DoS should implement each idea (1 = No, 3 = Maybe, 5 = Yes); ideas with scores ≥ 95th percentile were invited to submit implementation plans; plans were reviewed by a multi-disciplinary panel to select a winning idea; an award ceremony celebrated the completion of the contest.

Results

152 ideas were submitted from 95 staff (n = 850, 11.2%). All Divisions (n = 12) and all staff roles (n = 12) submitted ideas. The greatest number of ideas were submitted by faculty (27.6%), patient service coordinators (18.4%), and residents (17.8%). The most common QI category was access to care (20%). 195 staff (22.9%) cast 3559 votes. The mean score was 3.5 ± 0.5. 10 Ideas were objectively invited to submit implementation plans. One idea was awarded a grand prize of funding, project management, and leadership buy-in.

Conclusion

A web-enabled open innovation contest was successful in engaging faculty, residents, and other critical role groups in QI. It also enabled the leadership to re-affirm a positive culture of inclusivity, maintain an open-door policy, and also democratically vet and prioritize solutions for quality improvement.

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Abbreviations

DoS:

Department of Surgery

IC:

Innovation Committee

IL:

Innovation lab

OIC:

Open innovation challenge

QI:

Quality improvement

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful for the executive leadership of Ann L. Prestipino, MPH and Elizabeth A. Lancaster, MBA. We appreciate the clinical operations and administrative support of Annette Levitt, RN and Katie A. Williams of the Department of Surgery. Moreover, we would like to recognize the technical assistance with data management and analysis provided by Ya-Ching Hung, MD, MPH and Yu-Tien Hsu, MD, MPH of the Codman Center for Clinical Effectiveness in Surgery. In addition, the authors are grateful to have received assistance with project management, technical support with the web-enabled innovation challenge, and general guidance from Maulik Majmudar, MD, Julia Jackson, MBA, Nora Metzger, MSW, and Victoria Vacaro of the Healthcare Transformation Lab.

Funding

Dr. Hashimoto was supported by the National Institutes of Health (Grant #: T32 DK007754-17).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Yanik J. Bababekov, Sahael M. Stapleton, Daniel A. Hashimoto, Elan R. Witkowski, Alex B. Haynes, Allan M. Goldstein, John T. Mullen, Eric M. Isselbacher, Keith D. Lillemoe & David C. Chang

  2. Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Yanik J. Bababekov, Sahael M. Stapleton, Daniel A. Hashimoto, Elan R. Witkowski, Alex B. Haynes, Allan M. Goldstein, John T. Mullen, Eric M. Isselbacher, Keith D. Lillemoe & David C. Chang

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  1. Yanik J. Bababekov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yanik J. Bababekov.

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Disclosures

Dr. Daniel Hashimoto reports Grants from Olympus Corporation, personal fees from Johnson and Johnson Institute, personal fees from Worrell, Inc., personal fees from Verily Life Sciences, personal fees from Mosaic Research Management, personal fees from Gerson Lehrman Group, other from Proximie, outside the submitted work. Dr. Elan Witkowski reports personal fees from Medtronic, out the submitted work. Drs. Yanik Bababekov, Sahael Stapleton, Alexander Haynes, Allan Goldstein, John Mullen, Eric Isselbacher, Keith Lillemoe, and David Chang have no conflicts of interest or financial ties to disclose.

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Bababekov, Y.J., Stapleton, S.M., Hashimoto, D.A. et al. Open innovation facilitates department-wide engagement in quality improvement: experience from the Massachusetts General Hospital. Surg Endosc 35, 5441–5449 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00464-020-08028-y

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