Some of the brightest stars in the UBT constellation are at the San Diego Medical Center and its many satellite facilities. At a recent San Diego UBT fair, co-leads from departments throughout the medical center proudly displayed storyboards explaining their teams’ goals and their most up-to-date results on performance improvement. UBT fairs have truly become a best practice for sharing of ideas and allowing the people who do the work to explore with their fellow workers what’s working and what’s not. More than 535 employees stopped by and chatted with team leaders in San Diego and hopefully, picked up a few new ideas that could be incorporated into their teams.

The majority of co-leads represented Level 4 or 5 teams, although there were a couple of Level 3 teams that snuck in due to their outstanding performance. At a recognition ceremony, each set of co-leads was greeted with certificates as well as a gift for the team from Mary Ann Barnes, senior vice president and executive director of the San Diego Service Area, Jim Malone, medical group administrator, Dr. Paul Bernstein, area medical director, Walter Allen, executive director and CFO of OPEIU, Local 30, and Barb Grimm, senior vice president of the OLMP.

It wasn’t always this way

A few years ago things were quite different in San Diego. Very few teams were in place and among those, very few were hitting anything close to what could be labeled as “performance improvement.” Thanks to a fantastic resource team, things have changed dramatically. Jenny Button, Amy Steiner, Katie Doyle and Sylvia Wallace and their hands-on sponsors, Marianne Giordano and Ray Hahn have all contributed to transforming the medical center into a forum for continuous learning through unit based teams. This is a key ingredient in the success of the service area, which is the third largest in Kaiser Permanente with a membership of more than 500,000. Currently there are more than 6,300 employees and 830 physicians in the area, which stretches from the border with Mexico north to La Mesa and hundreds of miles to the east. Throughout this huge territory, the resource team has managed to engage the staff in the important work of improving the quality of life for every Kaiser member.

San Diego is the latest in a growing number of areas hosting UBT fairs. Hawaii held one last month and Orange County plans to hold its second UBT fair in November. Its first fair was held late last year. We’ve said this before but it bears repeating: The pride the co-leads show in exhibiting the work of these high performing teams in these fairs is immediately apparent. The excitement and energy generated is amazing and a real pleasure to observe We encourage every facility or service area to continue to hold UBT fairs and proudly display the great work going on daily at Kaiser Permanente. And don’t forget to invite us so we can experience the great work you do every day!