Overcoming the Healthcare Crisis Within by Joe Tye and Bob Dent

Overcoming the Healthcare Crisis Within by Joe Tye and Bob Dent

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PRELIMINARY DRAFT – July 2, 2015

Overcoming the Healthcare Crisis Within

by Joe Tye and Bob Dent

Joe Tye, MHA, MBA is Founder and CEO of Values Coach Inc. He is the corresponding author at

Bob Dent, DNP, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, CENP, FACHE is Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Midland Health

Abstract

This article makes the case that in addition to the oft-reported external healthcare crisis of cost, access, and quality there is an internal healthcare crisis that is reflected in frequent references to disengagement, bullying, lateral violence, and similar terms. The authors share results from Values Coach Culture Assessment Surveys covering more than 6,000 respondents from 15 different hospitals and professional associations plus data from national engagement studies to make the case that we need a movement for a more positive and productive culture of ownership. Such a culture, they argue, must be characterized by these three things: emotionally positive, self empowered, and fully engaged. They share specific strategies for fostering a culture of ownership and cite the example of how Midland Memorial Hospital in Midland, Texas used these strategies to achieve record-high employee engagement and patient satisfaction. They conclude with recommendations for leaders.

For years we’ve seen headlines about the “healthcare crisis” related to cost, access, and quality. Many of these intractable problems are largely, or completely, beyond the direct control of an individual hospital or even a large healthcare system. But there is another healthcare crisis. This one is on the inside and it is within our power to manage. This “crisis within” is reflected in the frequency with which terms such as bullying, lateral violence, incivility, passive-aggressiveness, disengagement, and other forms of toxic emotional negativity (TEN) show up in the healthcare literature. Dealing with the crisis within will help healthcare organizations more effectively cope with the challenges imposed by the external environment.

In this article we will assess the costs of this inner crisis, explain why fostering a stronger culture of ownership within healthcare organizations is the solution, and share ideas for doing this. We will describe a hospital initiative in which these actions resulted in positive culture change, enhanced employee engagement, and higher patient satisfaction, then conclude with recommendations for leaders.

The Healthcare Crisis Within

Organizations that study employee engagement consistently find that, on average, only about 25 percent of employees are engaged, while 60 percent are not engaged, and 15 percent are aggressively disengaged. There is obviously a huge variation between organizations, even within the same industry. The experience of being an employee or a customer of Costco vs. Walmart, of Southwest Airlines vs. United Airlines, or of Zappos vs. Payless Shoes could not be any more different, even though these companies are selling the same products to the same customer base. The difference is culture and the respective level of employee engagement or disengagement.

Unfortunately, despite the importance of the healing mission as opposed to, say, selling shoes, the problem of disengagement and toxic emotional negativity is as great, if not greater, in healthcare as it is in other industries. This is visibly reflected in negative attitudes and counterproductive behaviors. One of the questions included in the Values Coach Culture Assessment Survey reads:

Our people reflect positive attitudes, treat others with respect, and refrain from complaining, gossiping, or pointing fingers.

We have compiled recent survey results from 15 different hospitals and healthcare professional associations totaling more than 6,000 responses (including more than 1,500 participants in a webinar Tye conducted for the ANA Leadership Institute). Nearly 60 percent of respondents disagreed with or were unsure about that statement, and only 5.6 percent strongly agreed (Chart 1).

Chart 1

We argue that if a majority (better yet, close to 100 percent) of the people who work in organizations devoted to health and healing “strongly agreed” with this one statement, there would be a renaissance of productivity, innovation, and fellowship in healthcare, and that healthcare organizations would far more effectively deal with challenges in the external environment. We also argue that it is an essential leadership duty to create a high level of intolerance for TEN (the way not so long ago we created a high level of intolerance for toxic cigarette smoke) and to actively promote a more positive and productive culture of ownership.

The Cost of Toxic Emotional Negativity

In his book The Coming Jobs War Gallup CEO Jim Clifton estimates the cost to the U.S. economy of employee disengagement to be 500 billion dollars per year.1 Since healthcare accounts for about 20 percent of GDP, a straight extrapolation suggests that employee disengagement costs healthcare organizations about 100 billion dollars per year. This equates to approximately $8,500 per employee per year.

The accuracy of this estimate is corroborated by another question in the Values Coach Culture Assessment Survey which asks people to estimate the percentage of all paid hours in their organizations that are wasted in complaining, gossiping, and other forms of TEN. While this is obviously a subjective question, the consistency of responses within and across organizations suggests that people do have a pretty good feel for it. When the average of all responses is applied against the organization’s annual salary and wage budget, an estimate can be made of how much money it is paying its people to engage in TEN rather than doing their work. This cost ranges from hundreds of thousands of dollars for a small critical access hospital to tens of millions of dollars for a larger medical center to hundreds of millions of dollars for a large healthcare system.

Of course, the negative impact goes well beyond just the financial cost. It also registers in lowered patient satisfaction, more employee disengagement, greater difficulty recruiting and retaining the best people, and diminished image and reputation within the community. It also increases the risk of serious medical errors. In her New York Times magazine article “No Time to be Nice at Work” Georgetown University professor Christine Porath wrote that “people working in an environment characterized by incivility miss information that is right in front of them. They are no longer able to process it as well or as efficiently as they would otherwise.” She cites a survey of more than 4,500 healthcare professionals in which “71 percent tied disruptive behavior, such as abusive, condescending or insulting personal conduct, to medical errors, and 27 percent tied such behavior to patient deaths.”2

The most pernicious reflection of TEN is bullying and lateral violence, the prevalence of which is reflected in book titles such as Ending Nurse-to-Nurse Hostility, Toxic Nursing, When Nurses Hurt Nurses, and Do No Harm Applies to Nurses Too!. A literature review by the authors revealed 115 articles with the word “bullying” in the title over the past five years – and that was just in the nursing literature. In the 2012 American Nurse Today article “Break the Bullying Cycle” Terri Townsend wrote: “Roughly 60 percent of new RNs quit their first job within 6 months of being bullied, and one in three new graduate nurses considers quitting nursing altogether because of abusive or humiliating encounters.”3

Toxic emotional negativity is the emotional and spiritual equivalent of cigarette smoke in the workplace – it is malignant, contagious, and highly destructive. As was once the case when people could smoke everywhere and we were all so accustomed to being chronically poisoned that we hardly even took notice when someone lit a cigarette, TEN is so ubiquitous in our world that we hardly even notice it unless we’re making a concerted effort to do so. And just as one person lighting a cigarette will instantly pollute the lungs of everyone else in the room, so too one or two emotional vampires can poison the environment of an entire workplace.

At the organizational level, TEN is reflected in chronic complaining, gossip and rumor-mongering, passive-aggressive resistance to change, cynicism and pessimism, bullying and lateral violence. TEN exacts an enormous toll on employee morale, patient satisfaction, productivity, and virtually every other operating parameter. It is a leading contributor to stress and burnout, compassion fatigue, and costly unwanted turnover.

At the personal level, TEN is reflected in negative self-talk, poor self-image, anxiety and depression, and a fear-based perspective on life. In a 2010 Harvard Business Review article Dr. Edward Hallowell stated that workplace disengagement is a leading cause of depression and failure to achieve personal and professional goals.4

An often abdicated management duty

There is an unfortunate level of learned helplessness on the part of healthcare leaders when it comes to acknowledging and dealing with the problem of TEN. One often hears comments like “that’s just the way he/she is” in reference to bullying or toxically negative individuals, and “you can’t change human nature” when it comes to eradicating TEN from the workplace. Quite to the contrary, TEN is not human nature, it is a choice one makes to inflict their bad attitude upon coworkers. “One toxically negative person can drag down the morale and the productivity of an entire work unit. It is a core leadership responsibility to create a workplace where toxic emotional negativity is not tolerated.”5

At a leadership retreat one of us (Tye) conducted for a VA Medical Center, one manager spoke for many in saying that the most toxically negative people in her area of responsibility were also physically intimidating, and that she was often too frightened to confront inappropriate attitudes and behaviors. At that, another manager read Wednesday’s Promise from The Self Empowerment Pledge: “I will do the things I’m afraid to do but which I know should be done. Sometimes this will mean asking for help to do that which I cannot do by myself.” She then said that every manager needed to have the courage to do their job, but that no one should have to do it alone. This was a catalytic moment in sparking a cultural transformation that unfolded over the next several years.

One hospital CEO (Paul Utemark of Fillmore County Hospital in Geneva, Nebraska) captured the spirit of the movement when he sent one of the authors (Tye) a note saying that as a result of a culture of ownership initiative “I got a whole new team and didn’t have to change any of the people because they changed themselves.” He went on to say that the most irremediably negative people eventually left the organization because coworkers simply stopped tolerating their negative attitudes and behaviors.

In the experience of Values Coach, the single-best predictor of how effective any culture change initiative will be is the enthusiastic engagement of the management team. This includes having the courage to raise the bar on expectations for positive attitudes and behaviors and constructively confronting those who refuse to meet those expectations, and having the determination and stamina to plow through resistance. When this happens, the parallel to the anti-smoking movement continues to play out: as people begin to appreciate how wonderful it is to work in a place that is free from TEN, they become more intolerant of transgressors. Over time, just as no smoking policies are now enforced by the culture, “Pickle-Free Zones” begin to be enforced by the people who benefit from them.

Illustration 1 – Pickle-Free Zone poster at Memorial Hospital of Converse County in Douglas, Wyoming

The Culture of Ownership Initiative at Midland Health

Midland Health in Midland, Texas has always had a good culture and benefitted from what locals call “West Texas Friendly.” Much had been done over the years to create a more collegial and positive workplace climate. Hospital employees and some of the medical staff had been given a common language for patient safety using the TeamSTEPPS program. Midland Memorial Hospital had been recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as a Pathway to Excellence® hospital, and dozens of Midland Health nurses have been honored as DAISY Award winners. Despite all this, cultural challenges had resulted in unacceptably low patient satisfaction.

Beginning in 2010, Midland Memorial Hospital started planning for a new state of the art patient tower. The hospital’s leadership assumed that these beautiful new facilities would naturally increase patient satisfaction. The tower opened in December 2012, but patient satisfaction scores continued to decline well into 2013 with some of the lowest patient satisfaction scores ever recorded at the hospital.

A Patient Experience Leadership Council was formed and a service excellence plan created. Initial training on behavior expectations resulted in a modest improvement in patient satisfaction, but also made it clear that more intensive work was required on the Invisible Architecture™ of core values, organizational culture, and workplace attitude.

At the beginning of 2014 the Values Coach Culture Assessment Survey was administered to MMH employees. Sixty-five percent of respondents disagreed or were unsure on the question “Our people reflect positive attitudes, treat others with respect, and do not complain, gossip, or point fingers” and less than five percent strongly agreed with that statement. In response to the question asking people to estimate the number of paid hours per employee wasted on TEN, 65 percent thought it was at least four hours per week and 25 percent thought it was eight or more hours per week. From this we calculated that MMH was spending more than $14 million per year paying people to complain, gossip, and point fingers instead of doing the work they were being paid to do.

The process began with every employee being given a copy of the book The Florence Prescription and invited to participate in the Culture of Ownership Initiative by signing a Certificate of Commitment to be emotionally positive, self-empowered, and fully engaged (Illustration 2). Following are some of the actions taken to promote these three qualities.

Illustration 2 – The Certificate of Commitment can be downloaded
for free at

Emotionally Positive

Just as the first step to creating a healthy workplace is a ban on smoking, so too the first step to creating a healthier and more positive culture was to raise people’s awareness of TEN. The process was kick-started when employees were challenged to raise $1,000 in quarters in a one week period by “fining” themselves and each other for engaging in complaining or other acts of TEN, with proceeds to be donated to the Employee Assistance Fund. In the lead-up to Challenge Week a variety of activities – including a pickle jar decorating contest – generated enthusiasm and helped staff be more attentive to outbreaks of TEN. The challenge was met, and with a match from Values Coach nearly $3,000 was donated to the fund. More important, The Pickle Pledge (Illustration 3) has become part of the MMH cultural DNA, and many employees have reported taking it home and sharing it with their families.

Illustration 3 – The Pickle Pledge

Self-Empowered

Taking a line from The Florence Prescription, MMH has adopted the mantra “Proceed Until Apprehended” to encourage people to think and act like owners. More important, The Self-Empowerment Pledge (Illustration) is being woven into the culture. Each weekday at the administrative huddle one member is asked to lead the group in reciting that day’s promise, a practice that is repeated in small groups throughout the organization. Almost every employee has received a set of Pledge wristbands (one for each of the seven promises), and they are being given away in the volunteer gift shop in return for a donation of any size to the Employee Assistance Fund. One of the authors (Dent) wrote a story that is included in the latest edition of Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul about an employee who used The Pledge to overcome a drug addiction – one of many such stories of people who have changed their lives with a commitment to self empowerment.

Illustration 4 – The Self Empowerment Pledge

Fully Engaged

Culture might eat strategy for lunch, but culture does not change unless and until people change – and as Marshall Goldsmith makes clear in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There 6, people will not make sustained changes in attitude or behavior unless those changes are based upon their own personal values. To help employees learn values-based life and leadership skills 40 MMH staff – including housekeepers, nurses, clerical staff, managers, and even chief of the medical staff – became Certified Values Coach Trainers and beginning in early 2015 started conducting two-day classes on The Twelve Core Action Values™.

Illustration 5 – A Certified Values Coach Trainer in the Midland Health Culture of Ownership Training Room, with an outline of the 60-module course on The Twelve Core Action Values

Results

Six months into the Culture of Ownership Initiative a follow-up Culture Assessment Survey was conducted. Slightly over 60 percent of respondents reported that their workplace was more positive as a result, and nearly 90 percent reported that they themselves were more positive. Based upon their estimates of time wasted on TEN, we calculated a Cultural Productivity benefit of more than $7 million per year. This represented thousands of hours of employee time that had been redirected from TEN to working with patients, better communication, and personal development. In a survey conducted 18 months after the initiative was begun, 87 percent of managers agreed or strongly agreed that Midland Memorial Hospital had a more positive and productive culture as a result, and 94 percent said that the initiative had helped them both personally and professionally. And in a survey conducted after the first several rounds of training on The Twelve Core Action Values course, more than 80 percent of graduates said they would recommend a course to others, and one-in-ten said that for them personally it was a “life-changing” experience.