How do you make a strategic plan a living document?
Our last plan 2013-2016 helped us to set values that we have stuck to and remembered for 3 years.
CARE – Compassion, Attitude, Respect and Excellence were linked to the local DHB values – we felt this would align us more closely with the DHB services in our region.
Last time we agreed goals around workplace improvements, process improvements, improved patient outcomes and improved services.
We have achieved a number of these goals and embedded them into our system – we have morning meetings, names on our doors, agendas for every meeting, reduced bad debt, expanded funding streams, and produced quarterly newsletters.
We now have an ecg and defibrillator as we planned, we have reduced waiting times and our waiting list, we have trialled nurse practitioner services and expanded our teaching opportunities.
Several issues we aimed for have not been achieved – we don’t have an USS and in retrospect most of our identified goals were achieved in the first 6 months after the plan was set. Those we did not achieve were large projects that needed a long term focus – such as reducing teenage pregnancies in the town and running a community awareness programme on gout.
This year our strategic planning process was an opportunity to revisit our team culture and to revitalise our values , to find out what our community think of us and set some short term achievable goals, the start of a cycle of 3 monthly improvement plans.
Executive Summary:
Our New Values
Integrity Compassion Excellence Teamwork
ICE –T
Our Next Goals
Weekly Clinical Meetings
Expand the uptake of MMH – 300 by May 2016
Expand use of technology to educate patients – students to produce a MMH promotion video
Reduce waiting times for patients – expand the doctor workforce
Increase patient numbers to 3600 by May 2016
Detailed Report
VALUES
On Wed March 2nd we closed the surgery for the afternoon and after a shared lunch reminded ourselves of our #my3words for 2016 – a personal values exercise we had undertaken the week before.
For me those values for 2016 are Centre, Connect, Create. I need to remind myself to “centre” and look after myself physically and emotionally, if I can “connect” with others I will be more effective, and I will enjoy life more if I “create” new things.
We then moved onto a values exercise –
The instructions were to silently organise ourselves into a hierarchy of values (we had words posted on our backs) – once we had silently agreed an order we had to then speak to the value we had been assigned and argue for why it should be in our top 4.
We chose
integrity – because without integrity we have nothing
compassion – because you cannot do this job without compassion
excellence – because this encompasses a passion for quality, effectiveness, and great patient outcomes and
teamwork – because we need each other, our patients, and our colleagues to achieve our goals.
COMMUNITY INPUT:
We then headed out into the community to find out the community and patient view of our service:
In pairs we went out into the street and shops and spoke to at least 3 people and asked what they thought the surgery does, what it should do more of and what it should do less of.
We posted the findings on facebook and will continue to reflect on comments we get from our facebook followers.
FINDINGS:
What’s the most important things to you about your health ? Eating properly, keeping fit, lifestyle issues , be healthy for my kids and myself, having support, being well informed, being able to make decisions about your health, mental health, being given the tools to make my own decisions, Knowing my doctor is approachable and knowledgeable Making sure I am trying to help myself, Keeping informed and knowing my options
What are the most important things about a good GP surgery? Showing interest, thorough examinations, approachable, seeing the same doctor, familiarity Having good staff getting an appointment when needed, flexible times, reasonable price, affordable, good communication and openness – never rushed Care about the bigger picture – holistic health Being understood, people who listen On time Appointment availability friendly service Confidentiality
What would you like to your GP to do more of in the next 3 years ? Less waiting times, longer consultation times, after hours, educational sessions – smears and breast screening etc More doctors , after hours clinics. Push the antismoking – clean up the street education Use the whanau ora services to support wider families, one day late night clinic a week, Home visits Develop a formal engagement with the police More follow ups with the hospital – it is very hard to see a specialist Our next exercise was to reflect on these comments – and to use a set of craft materials to develop a model structure that described our ideal surgery in the next 3 years – we broke into two groups and thought about what we should do more of as a team, what we should do less of as a team, and built our ideal worlds :
The “Whare Waka” model was based on Mason Durie’s Te Whare Tapa Wha model and “The Blue Path” was based on the materials in the box !
The Blue Path
The Whare Waka
The ideal world exercise was fun and creative and it also made concrete our values and started us thinking about the bigger and longer term picture for the surgery.
The videos can be viewed on Vimeo.com
The Blue Path – https://vimeo.com/157862107
The Whare Waka – https://vimeo.com/157812550
Each group then further explored the things we should do more of, the things we should do less of and 3 achievable goals for the next 3 months.
BRAINSTORM :
More of:
- time availability to interact between staff – we need to be able to see more of each other to discuss clinical cases
- awareness of how long people have been waiting in the book – protect your time for other patients
- involvement of reception if the appointment is going to blow out in time
- planning for unexpected patients.
- longer opening hours
- education training for staff
- doctors
- MMH – expanding the uptake
Less of:
- chasing up patients – we can go round in circles chasing up things for patients
- short staff days
- bullying from patients
- phone calls
- bad debt
- outstanding debt
- people not using MMH even though they are signed up
Goals
Increase patient numbers to 3600 by May
Increase MMH numbers to 300 by May
MED students to do a video to promote health
Waiting time improvement.
Clinical time set aside every week
Our New Values
Integrity Compassion Excellence Teamwork
ICE–T
Our Next Goals
Weekly Clinical Meetings
Expand the uptake of MMH – 300 by May 2016
Expand use of technology to educate patients – students to produce a MMH promotion video
Reduce waiting times for patients – expand the doctor workforce
Increase patient numbers to 3600 by May 2016
WE WILL REVISIT THIS IN MAY 2016