Peace and relaxation don’t usually come to mind when visiting the dentist, but Kaiser Permanente dental teams in the Northwest are making that a reality by offering spa-like services for patients.

KP members can choose from an array of complimentary offerings that include heated blankets, pillows, and personal headphones. Started in 2013 by team members in the Glisan Dental Office, the amenities are a hit with patients. Even better, the team’s idea has spread to other KP dental offices in the Northwest region. Read the whole story on the Northwest InsideKP portal.

Early in her nursing career, Yvonne Roddy-Sturm, now the chief nursing executive at Ontario Medical Center in Southern California, saw that caregiver diversity—or lack of it—matters.

“I saw differences in how some providers cared for people,” she says. “It wasn’t just based on race—economic status, language, lots of things came into play. We all make assumptions about others.”

The consequences of such assumptions are serious, impacting the quality of care a patient receives and leading to a wide range of health disparities.

In the 30 years Roddy-Sturm has been with Kaiser Permanente, our member and patient population has become more diverse—as has our workforce. And that’s helped KP deliver high-quality, patient-centered care.

“Patients who can relate to their caregiver are more likely to follow their treatment regimen,” says Roddy-Sturm. “They’re more likely to ask questions of people who are more like them.”

The Labor Management Partnership plays a significant role in building the skills, cultural competence and work environment needed to serve KP’s diverse patient population.

For example:

• Unit-based teams provide a more inclusive workplace and give staff members a safe place to speak up.
• Two LMP-sponsored educational trusts provide tuition assistance, paid time off and career counseling to help employees move up the career ladder.

And there’s more. Many departments, including Ontario’s nursing department, make their diverse teams part of the hiring process.

“We always start with the skills required to do the job,” says Roddy-Sturm. “Then our panel members bring their own insights and diversity to the discussion. They look for fit, flexibility, compassion and empathy, as well as skill. We try to live our values.”

For the past few years, unit-based teams have been driving a powerful transformation. It’s helping to control chronic diseases; assisting in the early detection of cancer; providing familiarity with a patient’s community; and enabling frontline employees to speak a patient’s language. It creates customized care for each of Kaiser Permanente’s more than 10 million members.

It isn’t a cool new gadget or something out of a sci-fi flick creating the change, but rather a modern care approach that takes into account the infinite number of ways KP members are unique—that emphasizes diversity and inclusion.

“All of us as individuals have all these different multicultural identities, and so do our patients,” says Ron Copeland, MD, senior vice president of National Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and Policy and chief diversity and inclusion officer. “We have to create high-performing teams that work together to deliver culturally responsive care that addresses those differences.”

Increasingly, the workers, managers and physicians working together in UBTs are considering the many facets of individual patients as they transform—in small and large ways—how they care for and serve those patients, using their knowledge and empathy to rethink how we deliver care.

As the stories in this issue of Hank illustrate, some of those changes are aimed at eliminating race- and gender-based health disparities. Other changes are taking place outside our medical facilities—working with school-age children, for example, to give them better food choices and teach them healthy habits that can last a lifetime. 

By doing this, UBT members are ensuring that Kaiser Permanente members are the healthiest they can be no matter their background or beliefs, language or gender, disability or economic status, whether they live in a big city or on a farm.

“UBTs have always led on innovating care by putting patients at the center, listening to them and customizing care for them,” says Hal Ruddick, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. “This work strengthens and deepens that high-quality care.”  KP’s workforce is full of diversity, and UBTs are designed to draw on all employees’ perspectives in deciding how best to do the unit’s work. It’s a natural step to include our members’ and patients’ viewpoints as well. Understanding and considering the complexity of the patients and communities we serve directly affects quality of care and health outcomes.

“It’s about using our knowledge of differences as an advantage to better understand the patients we care for,” says Dr. Copeland. “Our goal is health care equity—so that all our patients achieve optimal health. For that to happen, it’s essential that we have approaches that account for our patients’ unique needs, preferences and living conditions.”