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“To liberate and coach health care knowledge workers to create wonderful client/patient experiences with leading-edge
strategies and tools.”
Free Brain-Candy! Join TedBall.com and stay connected to the evolving news about health system transformation and gain free access to 18 thought-provoking essays. Bob Morton, Board Chair @ NSM LHIN says: “Ted’s blogs and essays are thought provoking. They provide me with insights into the issues we are dealing with on a daily basis”. To join TedBall.com, click on Register with us.
Find out about each of these Capacity-Building Workshops.
Health Link Shared Vision Workshop (50-70 people)
Systems Thinking & Collective Intelligence On System/Service Design (300-500 people)
Patient Experience Design One-Day Learning Workshop
Disruptive Innovation: Patient & Family-Centred Care (3.5 hours Workshop)
"Ted is an excellent leader for Board Retreats. He was knowledgeable to the extreme in his field. We learned much about future challenges. This retreat has enabled Board members to begin the process of transformation to our future system."
-- CECCAC Board member
Thinking of asking Ted to facilitate your board/senior staff retreat? Check out the CECCAC Board/ Staff Retreat Evaluation Survey Results .
“Ted Ball’s presentation to the South West LHIN health service providers was engaging and thought-provoking, conveying a perfect mix of unbridled optimism and stark realities.”
-- Michael Barrett, CEO, South West LHIN
To view Ted's presentation at the South West LHIN, click Quality Symposium
Ted Ball is available to address conferences or design retreats for Governance & Management. Give him a call @ 416-581-8814 and explore your unique circumstances.
Read this >Special Report On Health Sector Transformation to learn about breakthroughs on patient/family-focused care.
Is your Board and the Management team aligned? Try this GOVERNANCE & MANAGERIAL TRANSFORMATION READINESS SURVEY
to see if your organization is ready.
"As Minister of Health, and as a frontline health care professional, there is nothing more important to me than the patient client experience."
-- Hon. Eric Hoskins
Find out how to significantly improve the patient experience across the continuum-of-care and within a single service: click on:
Patient Experience Brochure
December 9, 2011HEALTH SYSTEM REDESIGN: What Is Changing? What Needs To Shift? Where Are We Going? What Needs To Happen?
April 20, 2012BIG CHANGES AHEAD: New Patient-Centred Incentives and Merger Strategies Will Shift Health Services
July 8, 2013 HEALTH LINK SYSTEM GOVERNANCE IN A DECENTRALIZED DELIVERY SYSTEM
November 18, 2013 Designing And Aligning Collaborative Governance Strategies, Structures, Cultures And Skills
June 5, 2013 DESIGN AND ALIGN YOUR OWN INTEGRATED HEALTH CARE SERVICES DELIVERY SYSTEM
April 7, 2014Aligning CEO Accountability Agreements With Collaborative Governance Concepts & Practices
Feb 9, 2015 Implementing Hoskins' Patient First Health System Transformation Agenda
February 16th, 2015 Beyond Structure: Fundamental/Integrated/ Aligned/Transformational Change Is Required
April 21, 2015Successful Transformational Will Require Mastering Two Ingrained Health System Learning Disabilities
May 25, 2015Will Tim Hudak's Idea That Our Hospitals Run The Health System Come True?
June 10, 2015HEALTHCARE SECTOR LEADERS ARE UNDERWHELMED: 2.0 Provincial Strategies Just Don't Cut It!
October 27, 2014 INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY GOVERNANCE BOARDS IN THE HEALTH SECTOR ARE AT RISK: IS THAT GOOD, OR BAD?
September 6th, 2011 DISRUPTIVE GOVERNANCE: An Alternative to Eliminating Local Community Governance Boards, Part I
September 14th, 2011 DISRUPTIVE GOVERNANCE: An Alternative to Eliminating Local Community Governance Boards, Part II
June 12, 2012 How Will Governance Transform In Our Evolving Healthcare Services Delivery System?
September 4, 2012 A BALCONY PERSPECTIVE FOR HEALTHCARE GOVERNANCE BOARDS
July 8, 2013HEALTH LINK SYSTEM GOVERNANCE IN A DECENTRALIZED DELIVERY SYSTEM
November 18, 2013 Designing And Aligning Collaborative Governance Strategies, Structures, Cultures And Skills
December 9th, 2013 Board's and CEO's Role
January 13, 2014HOW TO STOP BLAMING: Six Principles For Accountability Design
April 7, 2014Aligning CEO Accountability Agreements With Collaborative Governance Concepts & Practices
March 23, 2015 GOVERNANCE RENEWAL: An Alternative To The Pending "War On Boards" By The Fewer Is Better Lobby
April 6, 2015 Wicked & Provocative Questions Designed To Keep Our Leaders Accountable -- And On Their Toes!!
March 23, 2015 GOVERNANCE RENEWAL: An Alternative To The Pending "War On Boards" By The Fewer Is Better Lobby
Feb 5, 2013 TRUST, PARTNERSHIP, ACCOUNTABILITY & VISION: The Key Success Factors For Health Links
Feb 11, 2013 Learning From Our Past Successes
Feb 25, 2013 Successful Transformation Means: Changing How We Think & Behave
March 4, 2013 REDESIGNING THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE REQUIRES EMPATHY: As Well As The Science For Complex Adaptive System Design
March 18, 2013 THREE LEVERAGED HEALTHCARE TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIES: “Bottoms Up”, “Integrate The Middles” & “Empower The Owners”
March 25, 2013 Nuka: The Customer-Owner Model
April 10, 2013 SKILLS FOR TRANSFORMATION: Dialogue & Generative Listening
April 17, 2013 FRAGMENTATION: Unless We Change How We Think, We Will Always Produce The “Same/Old” Results
May 30, 2013 DOERS & HELPERS: A Framework For Thinking About Roles For Implementing Health Links
June 5, 2013 DESIGN AND ALIGN YOUR OWN INTEGRATED HEALTH CARE SERVICES DELIVERY SYSTEM
June 12, 2013 “BOSSES” VS. “COACHES”: A Transformational Shift In Thinking & Behavior
June 17, 2013 THE GALILEAN SHIFT IN HEALTH SYSTEM DESIGN AND STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT
June 24, 2013 Health Links Will Need The Right Mix of Stewardship/ Servant-Leadership and Adaptive Leadership If They Are To Succeed
July 1, 2013 HEALTH COACHES: An Innovative Program For Providing Truly People-Centred Care
July 8, 2013HEALTH LINK SYSTEM GOVERNANCE IN A DECENTRALIZED DELIVERY SYSTEM
July 22, 2013 Personal, Organizational & System Transformation Journeys Need To Be Aligned To Work Synergistically Together
July 29, 2013 MENTAL HEALTH’S EXPANDED ROLE IN A TRANSFORMED HEALTHCARE SERVICES DELIVERY SYSTEM
Sep 10, 2013 SO, YOUR HEALTH LINK WANTS TO SUCCEED
April 7, 2014Aligning CEO Accountability Agreements With Collaborative Governance Concepts & Practices
June 15th, 2011 Patient-Centred Care Makes for Good Public Policy
February 9, 2012 IMPLEMENTING A PATIENT-CENTRED CARE STRATEGY
February 16, 2012 MEASURING PATIENT-CENTRED CARE — AND LIBERATING FRONT-LINE SERVICE PROVIDERS TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
February 22, 2012 LEVERAGED ACTIONS & CATALYTIC TRIGGERS: The Art And Science Of Experience Design Methodologies
March 2, 2012 PATIENT ANXIETY/ EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Unleashing The Power To Care Within A Culture Of Empathy
March 12, 2012 Patient-Centred Care Means Deep Fundamental Changes Are Required
March 19, 2012 PATIENT-CENTRE CARE: Discovering Leading Practices & Lessons Learned
March 26, 2012 Pushing The Boundaries Toward A ‘People-Centred’ Healthcare System
April 20, 2012 BIG CHANGES AHEAD: New Patient-Centred Incentives and Merger Strategies Will Shift Health Services
March 4, 2013 REDESIGNING THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE REQUIRES EMPATHY: As Well As The Science For Complex Adaptive System Design
March 31, 2014 Nuka The Customer-Owner Model
February 6, 2015 Implementing Hoskins' Patient First Health System Transformation Agenda
November 10, 2014 Hope Is Possible For Mental Health Reform Under The Wynne/Hoskins/Bell Team
January 30, 2015 IF THE BEER STORE DELIVERED PALLIATIVE CARE…We Might Finally Get A Universal Program!
March 2, 2015 "Transformational Leadership": A New "Way-Of-Being" In A Patients First Integrated Delivery System
May 18, 2015 Our Children's and Adult's Mental Health Care System Needs Aligned and Integrated Transformational Change
Read about Experience Design Storyboard And Master Process. These truly innovative and effective methodologies are very exciting because they transform the customer/patient /client experience – while significantly improving efficiency and creating more satisfied and engaged healthcare service providers.
Read a great paper by the extraordinary public servant, Helen Stevenson, who saved $1.5 billion in ODB costs.
Are mergers of small organizations really going to improve our healthcare system? Read this paper in the Public Sector Innovation Journal by Steve Lurie, CMHA, Toronto.
"Ted is a world-class resource for providing insight and intelligence to understanding and solving complex challenges. He regularly can recall a myriad relevant ideas and experiences that can be either practical or thought-provoking. If there was something important but impossible to do he is the first one I'd call."
-- Art Frohwerk, Managing Partner at Clearpath, LLC
"Ted Ball is a brilliant system thinker, and the best intelligence gathering resource Ontario has. But, what is uniquely exquisite about Ted, is his no non-sense attitude, honesty and integrity to share information generously and widely. Working with Ted is at once - inspiring, stimulating and fun! "
Dr. Doris Grinspun
Chief Executive Officer
Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario
Download Designing and Creating Second Curve Healthcare System to discover more about our evolving health system. As you read through what the system will be like over the next three to five years, what do you think are the skills and capabilities required by 2nd Curve Leaders.
February 10th, 2014The CCAC Lobby
February 18th, 2014The Nurses And CHCs Lobby
February 25th, 2014The Doctor's Lobby
March 3, 2014 The Patient’s Lobby
There will be no health system transformation until and unless there is healthcare governance transformation.
To learn about governance renewal and transformations click on:Governance Matters
New website for the former Patients' Association Of Canada. Read Sholom Glouberman's blog. Gain insights into the patient/caregiver experience. Read all about it @ www.patientscanada.ca
If you want to learn about why emotional intelligence and Personlaysis are key to transformation, call Ted Ball @ 416-581-8814.
For a preview, click on "What is Personalysis®". Then, talk to Ted.
Learn more about Experience Design Methodologies
@ Clearpath
Learn about the patients’ perspective @
Patients' Association of Canada (PAC)
Learn about how to become person-centred when designing health systems from the Canadian Association for People-Centred Health
Learn how to deal more effectively with the Provincial Government. Darwin Kealey & Leonard Domino have advise here: Leonard Domino
Ted Ball is available to address conferences or design retreats for Governance & Management. Give him a call @ 416-581-8814 and explore your unique circumstances.
Seventy percent of all major change projects fail. While 30% succeed, Quantum’s curriculum reflects the “lessons learned” from the 15% who experience dramatic performance improvements.
“After our two-year investment in capacity-building with Quantum, we had remarkable performance improvements and extraordinary value. Today, our 120 directors, managers and other key leaders are not just more strategic, more aligned and more leveraged, they are also happier, more collegial and more effective as leaders and managers. We are achieving real results with these adult learning technologies and systems thinking tools.”
Bonnie Adamson
Former CEO, North York General Hospital, 2008
TED BALL has been a coach, guide and mentor to CEOs, Ministers of Health and Executive Directors of community agencies for 20 years. Now, through the Quantum Leadership Institute, you can access Ted’s leadership coaching insights as well as the powerful learning tools from Quantum to prepare you as a 2nd Curve health system leader. Following an assessment and evaluation dialogue with Ted Ball, coachees can either co-design a leadership learning journey to match their unique needs and budget, or determine that other types of investments in their learning & growth would be more appropriate for their goals.
“I was so inspired by the coaching model Ted used, I decided to work on a PhD and learn more about human potential and how to release it.”
-- Gwen DuBois-Wing
PhD and Evidence-Based Coaching student
Fielding Graduate University
Ted Ball is available to address conferences or design retreats for Governance & Management. Give him a call @ 416-581-8814 and explore your unique circumstances.
Good outcomes can be achieved for people with complex mental health needs in the community when they receive the appropriate high support housing and community mental health services and supports.
Read this important paper from CAMH: "From Hospital to Home: The Transitioning of Alternate Level of Care and Long-stay Mental Health Clients".
“Hospitals commonly espouse a commitment to patient-centred care (PCC). Most fail to achieve it.
Today’s healthcare providers were not trained to provide PCC. They lack the requisite skills, and patient empowerment unsettles them.
The term PCC does not accurately describe what modern patients seek. Patients do not want to be at “the centre” of a healthcare construct; they want to be recognized as full partners in their care, and are speaking about this with an increasingly unified and powerful voice.
Indeed, while economics, demographs, and technological advances will continue to prompt change ‘the patient voice’ is poised to become its dominant driver.”
-- Dr. Robert Bear
Read on article by Dee Hock based on his book: The Chaordic Organization
Check out a powerful and insightful curriculum that is fully customized to meet the goals and needs of future health care leaders. Click here for Coaching Services.
Learn more about Experience Design Methodologies
@ Clearpath
Learn about the patients’ perspective @
Patients' Association of Canada (PAC)
Learn about how to become person-centred when designing health systems from the Canadian Association for People-Centred Health
Learn how to deal more effectively with the Provincial Government. Darwin Kealey & Leonard Domino have advise here: Leonard Domino
“There is a clear misalignment between what Canadians value, and how Canadian health system performance is measured and funded. Canadian values have shifted substantially in recent years, towards a preference for greater autonomy and empowerment in managing their health care and management. Canadians' values reflect the desire for a more ‘personalized’ health care system, one that engages every individual patient in a collaborative partnership with health providers, to make decisions that support health, wellness, and quality of life.”
Click here for the executive summary of Measuring What Matters: The Cost vs. Values of Health Care – a must read white paper from the Ivey Centre for Health Innovation.
Become part of the worldwide movement to re-humanize healthcare. Heart In Healthcare aims to:
• To encourage health workers to reconnect to the heart of their practice
• Allow compassionate caring to rise above institutional rules and limitations
• Create the world’s most inspiring community of health professionals, students, patient advocates and leaders, working together in a worldwide movement to transform healthcare from within.
Check this out @ heartsinhealthcare.com
Canadian Blood Services’ integrated management model can be used to reform Canadian Healthcare services. See Graham Sher’s Paper @ Resolving Health Quagmire.
Rik Ganderton, CEO of Rouge Valley Health System, suggests in his recent blog that we need big changes in our health system @ Why big changes are needed in our health care “system”
"In Ontario unless there is a compelling political and financial case made to restructure the system, it’s safe to assume that Ontario will not move to formalize health system integration through disbanding organizations and creating regional health authorities. The evidence is overwhelming that not only would it be an extremely expensive proposition – somewhere in the $4-5 billion range to harmonize wages – but it would also be extremely disruptive – taking some 4-5 years to re-establish some form of equilibrium – and could also have a significant negative impact on foundation fundraising on which hospitals in particular are dependent."
- Steve Elson
Shared Accountability: the next step in Ontario’s integration journey?
• There will be a 50% improvement in the number of people surveyed who say, “I can contact my primary healthcare team on my day of choice”.
• There will be a 50% reduction in the age-standardized hospitalization rate for ambulatory care sensitive conditions.
• (by March 31, 2014) All patients have the option to receive necessary surgery within three months.
• Zero surgical infections from clean surgeries.
• No adverse events related to medication errors.
• The healthcare budget increase is less than the increase to provincial revenue growth.
• The healthcare budget is strategically invested in information technology, equipment and facility renewal.
• Zero work place injuries.
• (by March 31, 2022) there will be a 5% decrease in the rate of obese children and youth.
• There will be a 50% reduction in the incidence of communicable disease.
• Seniors will have access to supports that will allow them to age within their own home and progress into other care options as their needs change.
• Patients’ ratings of exceptional overall healthcare experience are in the top 20% of scores internationally.
• There will be a 50% reduction in patient waits from General Practitioner referral to specialist and diagnostic services.
• (by March 31, 2015) all cancer surgeries or treatments are done within the consensus-based timeframes from the time of suspicion or diagnosis of cancer.
• Individuals with severe complex mental health issues with alcohol co-morbidity or acquired brain injury will have access to supportive housing in or near their community.
• No patient will wait for emergency room care (patients seeking non-emergency care will have access to more appropriate care settings).
• Employee engagement provincial average score exceeds 80%.
• Increase physician engagement score by 50%.
March 8th, 2011 Reality Therapy for Healthcare Leaders, Part 1
March 15th, 2011 Reality Therapy for Healthcare Bureaucrats/Policy Wonks & Politicians, Part II
June 28th, 2011 A message for Political Party Leaders
September 30th, 2011MINORITY GOVERNMENT: An Emerging Disaster of Indecision On The Health File!
May 4, 2012 Potential Solutions To The MSAAs “Workload Crisis” For LHIN Administrators
“Over time, we'll need fewer and fewer hospitals. Boards of those institutions need to just remember that the scope of what they need to do is to be responsible for the health of people, not the preservation of the institutions."
—Clayton Christiansen
Disruptive Innovation
“A regional health authority, if it’s going to be effective, should be able to determine how money is spent within a region, shifting money from hospitals to community care, from treatment programs to prevention, and so on. This approach worked extremely well in Alberta, so well that it was dismantled because it stripped too much power and control from politicians and policy-makers in the Health Ministry.”
-- André Picard
The Globe and Mail
Seventy percent of all major change projects fail. While 30% succeed, Quantum’s curriculum reflects the “lessons learned” from the 15% who experience dramatic performance improvements.
Like rainbows, examples of patient-centered care are few and far between, but here are some tell-tale signs:
• Providers and patients know each others’ names;
• Patients’ opinions are actively sought, listened to and honored where possible;
• Patients tell you that their doctors and other team members really listened to what they had to say;
• Patients are treated as the most important member of their health care team and taught how they can best contribute to the team’s success;
• Providers feel that their patients are actively involved in their own care; and,
• You see a significant improvement in patient health status, adherence, engagement, level of utilization and patient/provider experience.
-- Steve Wilkins
Mind the Gap
Patient-centered care means involving patients in the planning, delivery and evaluation of health care where it really counts in terms of outcomes, patient adherence, cost reduction and fewer re-hospitalizations.
Being patient-centered is like doing a market research study and then implementing the findings. Patient-centered care does not give absolute control to patients, it simply invites them into the party and gives them a place at the table. As providers, we don’t do a good job of listening to patients. We do an even worse job when it comes to acting on what patients tell us they want.
-- Steve Wilkins
Mind the Gap
1. Care is based on continuous healing relationships.
2. Care is customized and reflects patient needs, values and choices.
3. Families and friends of the patient are considered an essential part of the care team.
4. Knowledge and information are freely shared between and among patients, care partners, physicians and other caregivers.
5. Patient safety is a visible priority.
6. The patient is the source of control for his or her care.
7. All team members are considered caregivers.
8. Care is provided in a healing environment of comfort, peace and support.
9. Transparency is the rule in the care of the patient.
10. All caregivers cooperate with one another through a common focus on the best interests and personal goals of the patient. (Borrowed from Margaret Gerteis et al.(Through the Patient’s Eyes)
Canada was in the top spot for the number of accidental punctures or lacerations during surgery out of the 17 countries surveyed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD).
At 525 per 100,000 hospitalizations, its rate was more than three times as high as Britain (174) and the U.S. (166).
“Almost half of Canadians with a regular doctor feel engaged in their healthcare. By engaged, we mean that patients always have enough time during visits, can always ask questions about recommended treatment, and are as involved as they want to be in decisions about their care.”
– Health Council of Canada Bulletin 5
September, 2011
According to David Carnevale, author of Trustworthy Government, one of the key differences between learning organizations and traditional controlling organizations “is that deeply ingrained defensiveness so characteristic of low-trust, traditional bureaucratic organizations undermines necessary learning. Trust expedites learning.”
Carnevale says that “Healthy learning organizations are managed with the objective of liberating and using employee know-how to improve work processes. The emancipation of employee know-how is enabled through a different philosophy of organization and job design, communication patterns, labor-management relations, participatory methods, and other processes that reduce the climate of fear and allow staff the necessary psychological peace of mind to fully engage their work”.
Traditional bureaucratic organizations are dominated by the need for control and conformity -- assuming that workers are incompetent, and therefore must be carefully managed. In turn, this creates high degrees of mistrust, defensiveness and fear -- all of which undermine learning.
In learning organizations, the assumption of competence is supported through the encouragement of curiosity, creativity and innovation. The people who deliver the organization’s services directly to its customers are encouraged to use their know-how to improve work processes. While successes are a cause for celebration, learning organizations must also accept and forgive mistakes as part of the learning process. They must be open to learning from their “best mistakes”.
Adaptive leadership means raising tough questions rather than providing answers; it means framing the issues in a way that encourages people to think differently, rather than laying out a map of the future; it means co-creating with people their new roles, power relationships, and behaviors, rather than orienting them in a new direction and giving them a big push.
At its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question: “What do we want to create. A shared vision is the vision that people throughout an organization or a community of organizations carry about what we want to be in the future.
Peter Senge describes the concept of a Shared Vision in his book The Fifth Discipline. He writes, “a shared vision is not an idea. It is, rather, a force in people’s hearts, a force of impressive power. It may be inspired by an idea but once it goes further - if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one person - then it is no longer an abstraction. It is palpable. People begin to see it as if it exists. Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as a shared vision.”
“Devolve decision-making selectively and where appropriate. Policy makers should consider expanding the accountability functions of regional bodies, strengthening specialty care networks, and supporting organic mergers and acquisitions within the system. Any system transformation primarily focused on significant governance reforms—for example by reinventing regional bodies from scratch—could actually distract attention from the more organic reforms needed that will have a positive impact on fiscal sustainability and produce unnecessary delay in implementing transformative change.”
– University of Toronto
“A healthy economy and shrinking government debt over the past decade seem to have been the main drivers for soaring health-care spending, while the much-feared aging of the population is having relatively little impact on medicare's bottom line, a new federal-provincial report concludes.
CIHI said that total health spending - by governments as well as private individuals and health plans - is set to reach $200-billion this year, about $5,800 per person. That is an increase of 4%, the smallest one in 15 years.
A separate report looked at the drivers of health spending between 1998 and 2008, when the figure rose by an average of 7.4% per year.
Spending on physicians is the fastest-growing chunk of the budget now, with the increase for 2011 projected to slow slightly to 5.6%. More doctors are being added to the system - 6,500 between 2005 and 2009 - while their income rose by an average of 3.6% per year. That followed a period from 1975 to 1998, however, when MD compensation rose more slowly than other public goods and services.”
-- National Post Nov. 4, 2011
Find out about Quantum's unique approach to experience-based design, organizational transformation and quality & safety-focused Boards.