Healthcare Team Training and IDEAS Partner to Launch StoryCare™

Healthcare Team Training (HTT) and IDEAS have partnered to launch StoryCare™, the first enterprise-wide, staff deployed teamwork simulation program using the power of story to measurably improve patient safety and satisfaction. StoryCare is the first system of its kind to leverage the power of story to create impactful team-based learning simulations by using the most powerful simulator: the human brain. StoryCare’s proven system integrates safety, satisfaction and performance across any healthcare organization through the rapid implementation of best practices and evidence-based behaviors specific to each unit or department and delivered at the workplace using only 15 minutes each week.

Developed through extensive research at the point of care, StoryCare addresses three key areas that healthcare leaders are striving to improve: quality improvement, patient safety, and delivering an outstanding patient experience. Reducing errors and satisfying patients have been shown to be highly correlated, and institutions that can accomplish both have a powerful advantage in the competitive healthcare marketplace. The key for hospitals is to rapidly deploy solutions to these challenging problems, and to engage their teams as innovation engines.

“Making change from the top-down alone has been shown to be mostly ineffective when it comes to transforming healthcare,” commented Stephen Powell, President and CEO of HTT. “We have found that one of the most effective approaches for changing culture is storytelling, and StoryCare puts the power of problem solving and developing unit-level solutions in the hands of front-line staff as they react and reflect with a new story each month that addresses pertinent issues facing their unit. Teams experiment with new behaviors and model best practices to achieve their improvement aims over several weeks. Then, they determine the solutions that work best for their unit or team and embrace them as their own. The StoryCare system provides a distinctive advantage to organizations who are seeking to implement change and those eager to sustain their gains. And the system fills a gap that exists between learning, behaviors, and results.”

“We have followed a rigorous process for developing the StoryCare system including thorough testing and usability,” noted Rick Stone, StoryAnalytics Master of IDEAS. “Having over 25 years in the story development business, we at IDEAS have truly marveled at the response from healthcare teams using StoryCare to engage, innovate, learn, reflect, and improve their performance in as little as 15 minutes each week. We are convinced that most of the major challenges facing healthcare professionals are found within the StoryCare library for teams to leverage for sustainable transformation and the easy to use online tools make implementing the program simple and straight-forward for leaders and unit managers.”

Healthcare leaders today are faced with an enormous challenge—to help their teams make sense of multiple initiatives to improve the quality of care, enhance patient safety, deliver an outstanding experience that is patient-centered, and align their behaviors with the organization’s mission and values. And do that efficiently with the highest professional standards. It is no wonder that teams experience ‘initiative overload’ when asked to make continual changes on all of these fronts. StoryCare simplifies improvement developing a capacity to change not just train.

The system includes an extensive library of stories that are all outcome focused, enabling leaders to connect the dots when improvement feels overwhelming, disjointed, uncoordinated or episodic, and can help them answer the ‘what’s in it for me’ question. This fact was echoed at one of the early pilots for the system at Dekalb  Medical Center. “StoryCare enables the multidisciplinary teams to communicate amongst each other as never before,” commented Lorry Lewis, MS, CCC-SLP, Manager of Clinical Services at DeKalb. “Since StoryCare has been implemented, new processes have been established which help the units avoid running into each other, creating smoother processes and enhancing teamwork and communication.”

Designed to integrate with Patient Experience (HCAHPS), Partnership for Patients, and Core Measures criteria, as well as TeamSTEPPS® (Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety) and other professional behaviors, StoryCare provides a protocol for change that is designed and determined by staff at the team level, thereby maximizing ownership—a key with any effort to drive enterprise-wide transformation. Team members decide what behavioral changes they want to undertake that align with organizational expectations for improvement, and collectively choose which behaviors they’d like to adopt.

StoryCare makes use of the natural social reinforcement that occurs when groups come together to reflect on their behavior and performance, and collectively set their sights on accomplishing a new objective. Because StoryCare is integrally linked to an assessment process driven by both patient safety culture and patient satisfaction survey tools, the StoryCare solution demonstrates clear, definable results by giving healthcare leaders a scorecard and a roadmap for future improvement actions. This is a simple, cost-effective, and pre-emptive solution to an accelerating business issue—instituting sustainable change that aligns team performance with escalating satisfaction requirements and safety protocols that are tied to reimbursement payments.

About Healthcare Team Training (HTT): HTT is a global provider of team-based learning, training and consulting aimed at improving patient safety, quality, the patient experience and staff satisfaction. Our solutions-based learning creates high reliability teams able to achieve adaptable, flexible and sustainable change. Our foundational methods and processes are built upon our extensive experience deploying TeamSTEPPS® to over 150 organizations worldwide in the civilian and government healthcare sector.

About IDEAS: IDEAS is an innovation studio specializing in entertainment, learning and marketing, and helps organizations create and communicate their story to their employees, clients, and guests; enhance experiences for guests, employees, patients and doctors in resorts, organizations, and health care facilities; and creates media of any kind that entertains, teaches/trains, or markets. The IDEAS staff includes a collection of creative talent with more than three hundred years of aggregate experience in the creative development, production, and post production of high-quality television, film, audio, multi-media productions, and themed environments for Healthcare, Corporate, Government, Education, Destination, Hospitality, and Television & Film clients.

For more information, contact Connie Hicks, Healthcare Team Training, (678) 369-6317 ext 123, chicks@healthcareteamtraining.com or visit http://storycare.com/