Vancouver Coastal Health Case Study: Generating Ideas to Create Sustainability in Healthcare
Creating a sustainable workplace is a concern across all industries. Preserving the environment and decreasing the carbon footprint is at the forefront of innovation efforts for many companies.
Idea sharing is where innovation begins. It is how businesses learn ways to make the workplace more sustainable.
Brainstorming is the first step to idea-sharing. It helps businesses gather ideas from inside and outside the organization. It is also a great way to bring generations together. Research shows 82% of Millennials support brainstorming meetings.
State and federal agencies are also creating idea-sharing initiatives to launch sustainability efforts. This government innovation inspires other organizations to get involved. One healthcare company, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), engaged employees in the idea-sharing process to create a sustainable operating room. VCH, located in British Columbia, provides healthcare services to more than one million people across British Columbia.
This IdeaScale case study examines their journey and shows how their idea-sharing efforts led to success.
Who Is VCH?
VCH administers its services through a network of primary care clinics, hospitals, long-term care homes, and community health centers. Their global reputation for medical innovation and healthcare excellence makes them an authority in the healthcare industry.
VCH employs more than 18,000 staff members who specialize in several areas, including:
- Mental health
- Primary care
- Public health
- Research
- Home health
- Public healthcare
- Community-based residential care
The VCH Innovation Platform
VCH introduced its idea-sharing initiative using the IdeaScale platform. Their goal was to engage staff across the organization to develop solutions to operational challenges.
The team began searching for a problem to showcase what the platform can do. They needed it to align with strategic priorities, require strong clinical leadership and benefit from the ideas of a diverse group of VCH stakeholders.
VCH launched “The Operating Room Sustainability Challenge” to discover ways of improving the operating room’s environmental footprint. In October 2020, the campaign was introduced to more than 800 members of the perioperative community.
This call to action was shared via email, at informational events, in posters placed in the surgical suite, and through at-the-elbow encouragement to participate. The community was encouraged to share solutions to the problem through a compelling presentation by clinical sponsor Dr. Andrea MacNeill.
The pitch was embedded in an interactive campaign brief by the innovation team. Additional media and information were included for more detail.
Employees were encouraged to share ideas via the online platform. Community moderators actively engaged with team members to start conversations around these ideas. The @mention feature was used when requesting comments and additional questions from subject matter experts. This was another great way to source more information.
After four weeks of ideation, all ideas were evaluated by a multi-disciplinary team. They used a five-star rating system to evaluate the ideas.
As noted in the case study, after meeting twice, the team decided to go forward with more than 90% of the suggested ideas. Some of these were large-scale initiatives, while others were small ideas that could be implemented immediately. This is another great example of the influence government innovation has on organizations and how it changes lives exponentially.
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