by Tony Chen

I've been running into more and more hospitals recently that have developed a great new innovation and made it work so well in their own facilities that they are compelled to share it with the rest of us. Several had tried to offer their services to their fellow hospitals for free, but were overwhelmed with demand to the point of starting a fee-for-service enterprise.

I'll be using this post to keep a running list of these innovations. So if you have any others, please comment or email me, and I'll add it to the list. What are hospitals doing right now that is so successful and innovative that other hospitals want to get in, too?

- Memorial Hospital - Innovation Consulting - bring your team to visit their hospital & innovation lab.

- Memorial Hospital - Chocolate Cafe Medical Ventures - triple your cafe revenue by opening a "chocolate cafe"

- ValleyCare - Retail Strategies Visit/Tour/Consulting - Learn how they've embraced a truly retail approach to healthcare and diversified their revenue stream.

- Baptist Health Care - Baptist Leadership Institute offers a wide variety of consulting services (leadership, physician strategies) and tools (e.g. idea management, 360 feedback, etc)

- Harvard - Joslin Center for Diabetes - Open a Joslin-branded diabetes center at your hospital.

- Park Nicollet - International Diabetes Center - Same deal, open an IDC-branded diabetes center at your hospital.