Kathy J. Sackman, longtime leader of UNAC/UHCP and a true partner to Kaiser Permanente, passed away on December 31, 2021.

Kathy began her nursing career in the emergency room at Pittsburgh Hospital, later joining Kaiser Permanente in the Intensive Care and Critical Care units at Fontana Medical Center.

She began her remarkable 33-year tenure as president of United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals in 1978, when the union consisted of just a small group of nurses. She led the organization through untold changes and monumental growth to over 18,000 registered nurses and health care professionals.

Kathy rose to become a union leader on the national scene, serving as an international vice president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the secretary-treasurer of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, and co-chair of AFSCME’s United Nurses of America. A valued voice among state and federal lawmakers, Kathy was one of the union leaders whose activism and passion led to the passing of California’s safe staffing ratio law, among other important public policy initiatives.

“Kathy was a visionary," said Denise Duncan, RN, UNAC/UHCP president. "She was there during the design and infancy of the partnership. She was very protective of the basic tenets that were crafted to support it and sustain it. She continued to be a huge believer that the people on the ground need a voice in how care is delivered and how we speak for it in the community. This is the legacy she left, a legacy that should inspire us as we do our work for the future.”

At Kaiser Permanente, Kathy was respected as a straight shooter and a true force at the bargaining table, advocating for both quality patient care and UNAC/UHCP members – and always seeking the best solutions for all parties. She was an avid supporter of unit-based teams whose vision helped craft win-win agreements and build our Labor Management Partnership into the successful, widely admired model that it is today.

“I was so saddened to hear about Kathy’s passing," said Arlene Peasnall, senior vice president for Human Resources, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals. "I have the deepest respect for her and know that at the center of everything was her passion in ensuring the highest quality care to our patients and providing a work environment in which her members could deliver that care. Kathy will be missed by all of us who had the privilege of working with her.”

Kathy will be remembered as a smart, funny, passionate and compassionate woman who strongly believed in the power of partnership, and in what we can accomplish together.

UNAC/UHCP is planning a celebration of her life. She is survived by 2 sons, Monty and Michael, who along with the extended family, have requested privacy at this time. Any cards or tributes can be sent to the UNAC/UHCP office at 955 Overland Ct., San Dimas, CA 91773.

Need a poster, video or article to share with your team? Looking for a copy of your union’s contract? This training will show you how to easily find and share information on LMPartnership.org from your desktop and your smartphone.

Training description

LMPartnership.org contains many tools employees, managers and teams need at work. This interactive training will show you and your colleagues how to navigate the site. You'll learn how to quickly locate, save and share successful practices, Path to Performance tips, icebreakers for your UBT meeting, and more. 

Path to Performance

Levels 1—5

Duration

Usually 30 minutes to 60 minutes. Can be customized to suit your team’s needs.

Who should attend

This in-person training is for unit-based teams, LMP councils, unit/departments, and other groups.

Last year, the outpatient procedure unit-based team at Capitol Hill Medical Center rewrote the instructions it sends to patients scheduled
for a colonoscopy. A patient who found the earlier directions confusing played a leading role in the process.

The new instructions helped reduce by 20 percent the number of colonoscopies that needed to be repeated. Involving the patient was “a transformational experience
for the team,” says Jennifer Walker, RN, lead UBT consultant and improvement advisor in the Mid-Atlantic States region.

It also showed the power of a new provision of the 2015 National Agreement. 

Q: What’s new?

• Our new Team-Tested Practices toolkits bring together all the ingredients you need to help your team succeed. Find out what other teams have done to improve, click to get the tools like the ones they used—and download a few fun goodies.
• We’ve made finding exactly what you need as easy (and fun!) as shopping for shoes online. Use our new navigation to filter by region, topic, department, format and team level.
• Our search engine is better, faster and more streamlined. Find what you need—without having to wade through a bunch of stuff you don’t want.
• The new site is fully responsive—so you can access it from any smartphone or tablet, at work or on the road.

Q: Where did my region’s page go?

A: Click on the About LMP tab to see the Regions page.  

Q: Where can I find tools?

A: Under the new Library tab—at LMPartnership.org/tools, and from a prominent link on the home page. Take advantage of the improved navigation and filter by topic, team level, dimension, role, tool type and format.

Q: Where did the videos go?

A: Find videos under the new Library tab. Or go directly to LMPartnership.org/videos. Zero in on exactly what you need by filtering by topic, region, team level and dimension.

Q: Where are the stories?

A:  Find stories under the new Library tab. You’ll find some stories under the Team-Tested Practices tab. These toolkits pair stories of teams with the kinds of tools the teams used to improve performance and meet their goals. This will make it easier for your team to follow in their footsteps for success. Stories you’ve read in Hank are under the Library tab and at LMPartnership.org/hank.

Q: Where is the UBT section?

A: The new Path to Performance section has most of the material you used to find in the UBT section; click on the tab or go directly to LMPartnership.org/path-to-performance. Find a customized kit of tools and materials tailored to any team level and P2P dimension. Or explore everything available for any one of the seven dimensions of performance (sponsorship, leadership, training, team process, team member engagement, use of tools, and goals and performance).

Q: Where is the Path to Performance toolkit?

A:  To access most of the materials that used to be in the Path to Performance toolkit, visit the new Path to Performance tab or go directly to LMPartnership.org/path-to-performance. With just a few clicks, find a customized kit of tools and materials tailored to the team level and P2P dimension you want. Or explore everything available for any one of the seven dimensions of performance (sponsorship, leadership, training, team process, team member engagement, use of tools, and goals and performance).

Q: Where did the toolkits go?

A: These are now our new How-To Guides. They're linked to from our LMP Focus Area pages, in the Path to Performance section, and elsewhere. To get a list of them all, go to LMPartnership/tools and then under the "Tool Type" option, select "How To Guides." 

What if every organization and every union had a labor management partnership like ours?

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. On Aug. 16, more than 250 union, business and government leaders from all over the United States gathered in Chicago for Partnership Day, a meeting hosted by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service at its biennial conference—and offered a realistic look at the ups and downs that occur in partnerships and what it takes to launch and sustain them.

“We know partnership can make a difference,” Allison Beck, FMCS director, told the gathering. “This is not some fantasy that happens in a make-believe world.” She should know. As leader of the FMCS, the federal agency that mediates labor disputes across the United States, she’s seen firsthand how acrimonious relationships can ruin companies and unions—and how more open and respectful ones can help them both succeed.

The partnership between Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions is the longest-lasting and strongest one in the nation, so conference participants asked many questions about how it operates.

A race to the top

Dennis Dabney, KP's senior vice president of National Labor Relations and Office of Labor Management Partnership, told the packed room he spends a lot of time on the phone with leaders from other companies interested in starting and strengthening partnerships.

“I've seen so many companies engaged in a race to the bottom,” Dabney said. “I'd like to see more engaged in a race to the top.” If he has any regrets about Kaiser Permanente’s partnership, he said, it's that we didn’t create unit-based teams sooner.

Colorado

The Regional Imaging teams in Colorado are lucky to have two effective sponsors: Joseph Gonzales, clinical operations for Regional Imaging, and Rebecca “Becky” Torres, a pharmacy technician and SEIU Local 105 member. Part of their success, the pair says, is the emphasis they have placed on sharing information—with each other and with their teams. The pair also figured out a way to spread effective practices. Using a PowerPoint template, the sponsors asked co-leads to explain what they’re working on, how it supports regional goals, whether it worked and the outcome. Then, the teams came together for a UBT Fair and shared their PowerPoints.

Georgia 

David Jones, MD, has a title unique at Kaiser Permanente: assistant to the medical director for unit-based teams. He mobilizes his fellow physicians in the Georgia region to get involved with UBTs and unleash the power of partnership to improve performance and grow membership. “The first thing I tell physicians about the UBTs is that it is about improving the work that we’re already doing,” he says. “It’s not about adding more work, it’s about looking at the work you're doing and figuring out how to do it better.” Read more from Jones—including how his experience with UBTs has transformed the way he delivers care to his patients.

Hawaii

A small region, Hawaii needed a novel approach to sponsorship: Branch out rather than always branch up. Initially, a five-member unit-based team committee tried to troubleshoot issues for the region’s fledgling teams. Often, those committee members, who also had roles as team co-leads or contract specialists, were trying to wear too many hats and got jammed. So the region, which now has more than 40 teams, has tapped 19 people to receive sponsorship training. The group includes middle managers, directors and other executives, frontline nurses who serve on the Kaiser Permanente board of the Hawaii Nurses Association, OPEIU Local 50, and former labor team members and co-leads.

Mid-Atlantic States

While the Mid-Atlantic States region’s clinical unit-based teams have management and labor co-sponsors, large teams such as lab and radiology are sponsored in a different way: A UBT leadership group made up of labor and management from these area performs sponsorship functions as a united body. “We generated a vision of our UBT sponsorship. We got very specific on how we would work together,” says Jane Lewis, executive director of health plan regional services and a member of the group that sponsors eight pharmacy UBTs. The UBTs report their projects and team dynamics at monthly meetings. The leadership group reviews People Pulse, service scores, quality results and other metrics, identifies struggling teams, and recognizes teams that excel.

Northern California

The region has been on a roll with its “A Leader’s Role as UBT Sponsor” training. Launched in the spring, the tutorial gives management and labor leaders an easy-to-understand yet in-depth look at providing effective support to unit-based teams and their performance improvement work. The short, online training covers everything from outlining a sponsor’s role and how a sponsor can model partnership to tips on developing strong UBT co-leads and high-performing teams. Several facilities have combined the training with in-person, interactive exercises, and early feedback suggests the blended approach is striking a chord with sponsors. The online training can be found at KP Learn.

Northwest

“My role as a senior sponsor is to bring the message of UBTs to physician leadership,” says Rasjad Lints, MD, the region’s executive sponsor of UBTs. Lints is especially interested in helping teams focus on outcome metrics—a measure of the final result of something, such as how many patients with hypertension have their blood pressure under control—and to help everyone on the team understand that improving on process metrics often drives improvement on outcomes. It can be difficult to see the value in participating in process metrics if team members don’t see how it relates to the outcome measures. “At the end of the day, physicians have to drive the care,” Lints says. While working in UBTs presents physicians with some unique challenges, he believes that “if the physicians aren’t engaged, it’s a lost opportunity.”

Ohio

In an effort to improve the quality of team project information in UBT Tracker, the regional LMP support team solicited the help of the people who support the work of teams—sponsors. In June, an improvement adviser met with Ohio’s 20-plus sponsors and asked them to work with their teams to boost the input of that data. To illustrate the value and role of quality data in UBT Tracker, they used the data in Tracker to brief the sponsors on their UBTs’ projects and status. Their approach made an impact: The region has reported an increase in sponsor engagement, and several teams have reported performance and relationship improvements. 

Southern California

The regional Labor Management Partnership department is launching a new sponsor training curriculum that covers the nuts and bolts of what sponsors do and how they do it. Topics include: the responsibilities of sponsoring bodies (such as helping define how the teams should be structured and guiding selection of co-leads); coaching skills to help develop UBT leaders; the similarities and differences between labor and management sponsorship; how managing in partnership differs from traditional management; and how the sponsor role differs from that of facilitators, project managers, trainers and consultants. Also included in the course are basics of the Labor Management Partnership and unit-based teams, such as the key elements for UBT success, the roles and responsibilities of UBT co-leads and members, and consensus decision making.

Each day, every day, Kaiser Permanente’s 3,500 unit-based teams are providing ever-better patient care and advancing our mission. Now, under the 2015 National Agreement, UBTs will have an even greater role to play—and higher expectations to meet.

The new contract, which took effect Oct. 1, 2015, calls for UBTs to bring the voice of KP members and patients into their work. Teams also will be making total health and safety a greater part of their activities. And they will undergo more rigorous, face-to-face performance assessments.

To help them meet the new expectations, there’s a cadre of expert peer advisors and coaches they can call on—unit-based team consultants and union partnership representatives (UPRs) trained in performance improvement methods. Both UBT consultants and UPRs support unit-based teams, but UPRs, who are coalition union-represented employees, also specifically mentor and support labor in UBT and performance improvement work. Both help teams sharpen their communication, data collection and analysis, and other skills needed to advance on the Path to Performance.

It’s a unique system to support workplace learning and innovation.

“I’ve learned a lot about how to build teams and how to use performance improvement tools,” says Gage Martin, an SEIU-UHW member and union partnership representative at the Santa Rosa Medical Center in Northern California. “I take that learning and help teams do projects in all areas of our Value Compass. It’s a great job.”

The UBT consultant and UPR roles were created, as a test of change, in 2008. Since then, they have helped KP set the standard for quality, service and the workplace experience, and delivered tens of millions of dollars in cost savings.

As we strive to deliver the promise of One KP—providing each member and patient with the best care experience, every time—we also need to have One LMP, with each person working in partnership, having the same resources available to them and the same accountability to upholding the National Agreement. UBT consultants and UPRs help make that happen.