by Tony Chen

"What kind of hospitals do you consider when you are looking for really innovative ideas?" That was the question I received recently from a physician leader. My answer: "Innovation comes in all different shapes and sizes. While most people might think of Mayo and Cleveland Clinic as the most innovative, you'd be surprised at how innovative some small community hospitals can be."

What about you? Who would you vote for as the most innovative hospital in the country?

Here's the hospital that has my vote: Memorial Hospital and Health System in South Bend, Indiana (note the neat url address).

It's not every day that you see a hospital with "Innovation" as one of its core values. I spoke with their VP of marketing and innovation strategy, Diane Stover, earlier this week. Boy, was I in for a treat! She explained the process of how their hospital eventually embraced innovation as a key strategic platform. They specifically looked outside of healthcare and visited the likes of 3M, Microsoft, Whirlpool, and many others. They saw innovation as the way to take their future into their own hands. They realized that innovation was the most sustainable way to retain and attract the best talent - to create an environment whereby employees get to do something that really stirs them. This has got to be the most impressive "organizational culture" transformation I've ever seen. Here are some stories that need to be told!

World-Class Healthcare Development Partner
Memorial has managed to set up one of the nation's top healthcare R & D centers. Baxter, DuPont, LandsEnd, WalMart, and several other big names you'd recognized are already their alliance partners. Essentially, we all know that healthcare is growing leaps and bounds. These companies need specific clinical expertise & patient access/insights to develop their products further. Memorial becomes their product development partner, their source for patients/focus group members, and their clinical expert advisors. You may ask: why wouldn't a company partner with a Mayo or Stanford instead? Simple, Memorial acts fast - they are set up to delight these corporate partners.

The Experience Economy
I'm not sure if Diane has a FACHE certification or not. But it doesn't matter because she has a unique certification in the Experience Economy. What a forward-looking competency that all hospitals should have in house! Similar to the "If Disney Ran Your Hospital" paradigm, we have to realize that as hospitals, we aren't just providing a service. We have to be masters at designing experiences - experiences that delight patients and their families.

Partnership with IDEO
Diane and her CEO had a deal - if a company's name came up 3 separate times, they'd check them out. One company was IDEO, the masterful design and product development firm and maybe one of the most innovative firms in the world. They went visit IDEO and was so inspired by their strategy by design concepts that they halted a $40MM heart/vascular center construction. Yes, I'll say it again - they halted construction (can you imagine the headaches?). They realized that they couldn't build this new building without incorporating the human-centered design elements. They hired IDEO and redesigned the building. Today, any new capital project that is submitted has to have a facility design as well as an experience design.

Innovation can be defined in many different ways - in patient care, in technology, in workflow, in corporate culture. Please share with us your innovation story in the comments! What hospital do you think is the most innovative in the country, and why?