What’s the Difference Between Innovation and Performance Improvement?

OSF HealthCare stands as a model health system for those who want
to do innovation right. One of the defining characteristics of
the Peoria, Illinois-based system is how it aligns innovation
with operations for everyone – all 24,000 employees across 159
locations, including 16 hospitals.

Becky Buchen is responsible for driving innovation at OSF
HealthCare. As SVP of Innovation Operations she works to engage
and educate people on the innovation process, leveraging the
eco-system for innovation built at OSF, including simulation,
analytics, OSF Ventures, Innovation Studio, Digital Innovation
Development and Performance Improvement.

Becky’s background in performance improvement has been a major
influence in OSF HealthCare’s approach to innovation. Prior to
her role leading innovation, she served as VP of Performance
Improvement where she focused on implementing methodologies to
monitor, assess and improve patient experience, patient outcomes,
and overall operations.

In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Becky talked to Keith
Figlioli about how OSF HealthCare formalized its vision for
innovation more than a decade ago and the thoughtful approach to
ensuring that it would be fully integrated – not simply a “bolt
on.” The goal was to truly make an impact and transform how care
was delivered across the organization, and to do so, OSF
HealthCare recognized that it had to apply the same level of
rigor for exploring, testing and measuring innovation initiatives
as it historically had to performance improvement.

In her conversation with Keith, Becky discussed specifics about
OSF HealthCare’s approach to innovation that both digital health
entrepreneurs and other health systems can learn from. Some of
the topics they discussed include:



Integrating innovation into culture. Perhaps the most
visible example of OSF HealthCare’s commitment to integrating
innovation into every aspect of its operations is the physical
footprint. At its main campus, OSF HealthCare has an entire
building dedicated to innovation, including two floors built
for simulation, allowing clinicians to test and understand new
approaches in a safe space, two floors housing its healthcare
analytics division, and much more.


What health systems are getting wrong (and right). To
approach innovation successfully, Becky says health systems
need to first have a fundamental understanding of the problems
they’re trying to solve. She warned of dedicating resources
towards solutions that are looking for problems. OSF HealthCare
learned to avoid this trap early, but Becky says it’s still an
area of caution for some systems. She talked about how critical
it is to pick problems that are big enough to make a
significant impact when they’re solved in new and different
ways.


Retooling and reskilling due to artificial intelligence.
Becky talked about the healthcare industry being “data rich and
information poor,” and described efforts to centralize data and
improve data quality as a critical step to driving value from
innovation. While tools like those being explored with
generative AI will ultimately allow healthcare organizations to
operate more efficiently, data quality and proper governance
are essential to establish first. And after that, healthcare
organizations should be thinking about how they will need to
retool and retrain frontline operators and clinicians.



To hear Becky and Keith discuss these topics and more, listen to
this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.