LMP

The nation’s economy is a wreck.

We are all living through a very troubling period in U.S. history.  Perhaps what most clearly defines why times are so tough, especially in recent years, is high chronic unemployment. The New York Times says that real unemployment in the U.S. hovers closer to 20 percent rather than the official 9.1 percent.

As copies of the beautifully crafted 2010 Labor Management Partnership Performance Report  land in dozens of medical centers, hundreds of medical office buildings and other operations of Kaiser Permanente, as well as our Coalition union halls, I want to encourage everyone to sit together, review its contents and have a discussion about what it all means.

Labor unions that are seeking to transform the role of frontline workers in health care organizations know that real change will take more than a high level of employee engagement. It will also take a different type of relationship between managers, physicians and workers.

A continuing theme of this blog is to challenge us to build a new language as a tool for creating change. One way of helping us to do that is to think about what our legacy might be.

How will we look back on our work?  How can we know for sure that our contributions actually helped to create a better future?

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions is currently experimenting with a legacy statement:

“Workers were empowered to deliver health care at a lower cost and higher quality.

Recently, President Obama described the care his grandmother received at Kaiser Permanente to Time magazine this way: 

 “…it’s actually one of the models of high-quality, cost-efficient care that’s out there right now, partly because they maintain such a stable base of patients and they construct a whole team approach that has proven to be very effective.