Case Study #1: Healthcare Objectives
Healthcare in British Columbia
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will lead you there.”
- based on Lewis Carroll “Alice in Wonderland”
A common objective is essential to guide and motivate any enterprise. In professional hockey, the objective is to win the Stanley Cup, and teams employ strategies to ensure they make the playoffs with a “Cup ready” team. Teams don’t need to win every game in the regular season, and some save players and bulk up rosters for the playoffs.
In a complex enterprise, objectives are nested and aligned under an overall objective. Objectives provide common direction and purpose, from the top to the bottom of the enterprise. They’re like a North Star that keeps everyone on course.
Our overarching vision is at the society level. If we think of humans as stewards, the objective for society and government is:
“Healthy Environment, Healthy People, Healthy Economy”
We can’t have healthy people without a healthy environment, and healthy people contribute to a healthy economy. Yes, we have work to do to achieve this vision.
Within this overarching vision, Healthcare supports Healthy People. The objective for our healthcare transformation project is:
“An efficient, effective, equitable, available, and sustainable healthcare system that is patient-centric, outcome-focused, and accountable to patients and healthcare workers.”
This objective is like a checklist. All of us can use its elements to evaluate and question change initiatives, and to hold ourselves and others accountable in a healthy enterprise culture.
Stakeholders “buy in” when decisions are based on evidence and support the vision. When I was Program Evaluation Coordinator for the Salmonid Enhancement Program in British Columbia in the 1990s, we developed performance measures for nine program objectives, compiled performance data for our enhancement projects, and based funding decisions (ok, budget cuts) on them. Although recommendations were Cabinet Confidential, performance measures were available to staff and the public. Overall program performance increased as lowest performing / highest cost projects were cut. More important, the approach strengthened a collaborative corporate culture focused on results. It was an example of open and transparent government making evidence-formed decisions, and one that was accountable to the public and to staff. Let’s do the same for healthcare.
For our Case Study #1: Healthcare in British Columbia, we now have the following elements of our transformation project:
· Problem Statement
· Objectives
Next up is Performance Measures.
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