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Want to move up in your career? Watch this short video to see resources that can help.
Also visit kpcareerplanning.org or the SEIU UHW-West & Joint Employer Education Fund and the Ben Hudnall Memorial Trust websites to see what's available in your region.
Produced by Alessandra Luckey
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A Food and Nutrition team creates an environment where employees feel free to voice their opinions and ideas—and can expect action to be taken on their input.
Produced by Sherry Crosby
Videography by Paul Erskine
Edited by Sherry Crosby and Kellie Applen
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A receptionist makes a mid-life career move, with the help of union educational benefits.
Find ways to grow your career at kpcareerplanning.org or the education trusts serving members of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions: SEIU UHW-West & Joint Employer Education Fund and Ben Hudnall Memorial Trust.
What can your team do to leverage technology to save money and improve the patient experience? What else could you do to help keep KP affordable for our member and patients?
What can your team do to better manage your inventory? What else could you do to save money and keep KP affordable for members and patients?
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By working with other departments to get the data they need, members of this pharmacy team in the Northwest reduced their expired-medication costs by 90 percent. What can your team learn from its success to help keep Kaiser Permanente affordable?
Produced by Jennifer Gladwell.
Edited by Jennifer Gladwell and Kellie Applen.
Videography and Photography by Beverly White and Laura Morton.
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This medical assistant used to fear computers. Now that she’s taken a digital fluency course, she is empowered to provide better care for her patients—and her family. Watch the video and then read more.
Beep! Beep! Beep! The electronic sound of Cary Brown’s alarm clock wakes him at 5 a.m.
The Kaiser Permanente member rises to shower and make breakfast, careful not to disturb his sleeping wife, Elissa, who is recovering at home after surgery on a broken leg at the Woodland Hills Medical Center in Southern California.
On top of completing household chores, the retired Hollywood TV director spends his day making sure Elissa is comfortable and pain-free.
The experience has taken a toll on him.
“The hours of staying awake and the repetitive nature of it—and not having any life at all outside of home—is very difficult,” says Brown, who worked on the hit TV series Doogie Howser, M.D.
Now he’s part of an ambitious effort by the Southern California region to enhance support for caregivers, who play a vital role helping to heal and comfort patients outside the hospital. By reducing caregivers’ social isolation, integrating them into the hospital care team and addressing their health needs, regional leaders hope to improve patient safety and quality in the home.
Under the initiative, frontline workers, physicians and managers are partnering with KP members and their families to design the ideal in-home care experience for patients and caregivers. Participants are using a creative approach to problem solving known as human-centered design, which starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with solutions that are customized to their needs.
“It’s a way to engage the folks who are most affected from day one,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Clinical Operations in Southern California. “No program that I could ever design will be as good as one that had the people who are most affected design it with us. It’s about empathy and understanding.”
Human-centered design is also an ideal tool for unit-based teams to use on performance improvement projects. It delivers on the fundamental concept of the Value Compass—to put the member and patient at the center of decision making—and both frontline workers and Labor Management Partnership leaders, from management and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, have been supporting the caregiver project.
At a meeting in Pasadena, the participants—patients and caregivers, KP employees and physicians—gathered in small groups to share personal tales and draw storyboards to help identify barriers, come up with potential solutions and provide insights to regional Home Health leaders.
Shawna Wallace, a senior physical therapist for Home Health and member of UNAC/UHCP, said the experience was eye-opening.
“I’ve gone into homes where caregivers really care about their loved ones, and they are extremely overwhelmed,” she said. “This is a great opportunity for us to see where we can make better programs for our caregivers and members in these scenarios.”
Brown is hopeful that the approach will give caregivers—and their loved ones—the emotional and physical support they need to thrive.
“If you take care of the family as a unit,” Brown says, “you make it possible for each individual in the family to be better.”
They finish each other’s sentences; they call each other “Mrs.”; they praise in public and correct in private.
Antronette Moore-Mohead and Joanna Harris are a model couple. They’d make a marriage counselor proud.
They’ve been together for three years, but they’re not married (to each other, that is)—they’re the unit-based team co-leads in the National Claims department, based in Oakland. Since co-leads frequently move on to new positions, Moore-Mohead and Harris are a long-term couple in the world of UBTs.
“We are all for the team,” says Harris, a national claims processor and OPEIU Local 29 steward, the UBT’s labor co-lead. “Praising workers’ effort or accomplishments helps keep morale up and folks engaged in their work.”
“Being transparent is key to succeeding as a team,” adds Moore-Mohead, the department’s processing supervisor and the management co-lead. “Also, honest, clear, concise communication is a must. So is having fun.”
They share stories and photos of their families, they tease each other about maybe not needing that sugary snack, and they can tell when the other is “in rare form.” Even on days when stress is high, the two know when to give each other space or when to say, “Let’s talk it out.”
“We are free to bounce ideas off of each other, without fear of being shot down,” Harris says.
The positive vibe and mutual respect between the co-leads is apparent, but they are clear that they don’t mix outside of work time to alleviate any appearance of favoritism.
“I love that Antronette is passionate about her work. She operates from the perspective of ‘there is no Big Me, little you,’” explains Harris.
The department they lead is responsible for collecting fees and processing claims from services performed outside of Kaiser Permanente facilities. Last year, the high-functioning Level 4 team of 39 claims processors and examiners, who are represented by OPEIU Local 29, saved more than $6 million by negotiating better rates for services rendered outside of the network.
“It’s important to pay it forward,” says Moore-Mohead. “We want to make sure we are growing our team and others have opportunities to learn.”
