Equal Voices = Better Care | Labor Management Partnership – This is a great video featuring a health professional I know personally and really respect. She is Louise “Lu” Casa, ARNP, who works at Kaiser Permanente Capitol Hill Medical Center, which is right next to The Center for Total Health (@kptotalhealth). She talks about being a part of a UBT, which is a unit-based team, that includes labor, management, and health professionals, including physicians and nurses, working together to solve challenging health problems.
In the case here, they raised hypertension control rates from 62% to 82%, which again, is unheard of in health care today. (Want to see how frankly terrible US health care is at controlling blood pressure? Read: Awareness and Treatment of Hypertension Among Adults – United States, 2003-2010, not much improvement, except in integrated care? | Ted Eytan, MD)
“When everyone gets really happy”
Listen and watch how every member of the team becomes involved in solving the problems of their patients and owning it together.
The video is not embeddable so you’ll have to click on the link, which will take you to the Labor Management Partnership (@LMPTalk) site where the video is hosted.
Breaking new ground: Total Health Commitment in the 2012 National Agreement
One more thing, take a look at the 2012 National Agreement between Kaiser Permanente and The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. In it is Exhibit 1.H.1.b, the “Total Health Agreement” where there is an agreement to create the healthiest workforce in the health care industry, based on a culture and an environment of health.
The agreement includes a new groundbreaking “Total Health” provision that recognizes a shared Kaiser and union goal of “creating the healthiest workforce in the healthcare industry by improving the quality and length of employee’s lives and enhancing the effectiveness and productivity of the organization.”
and
“This is exactly what we had in mind when our union started Let’s Get Healthy California, said Judie Adams, a Kaiser medical assistant in Napa. “We said to Kaiser, ‘Instead of cutting our benefits, there’s a better way. Let’s focus on health, let’s reduce healthcare costs by working together to improve the collective health of Kaiser employees.’ And they agreed.”
They never taught me in medical school what partnership was when it came to organized labor (does any medical school teach it?). I’m learning about it here, in a place where it’s working and making a difference for the people in Washington, DC, and everywhere Kaiser Permanente delivers care.