Evaluating Change at Alegent Health

Alegent Health (AH) conducted six large group interventions or “decision accelerators” (DA) to generate innovative strategies for the six clinical service areas. Researchers at USC’s Center for effective organizations contracted with AH to assess the impact of the interventions and help the organization learn how to leverage further change. The implementation feedback involved executive interviews and surveys from people who participated in the “review DAs”, thus reflecting on implementation progress and plan future changes and support a positive assessment of overall progress.
People generally agreed that the implementation of the clinical strategies was going well. They were positive about social capital that had been created by the DAs, especially between managers and physicians, as well as evidence of culture change. Overall the majority of persons believed that the DAs were a great energizer for the organization, generated comprehensive strategies and catalyzed important changes.
However the strengths of the DAs were mostly felt by top management while the perception of the DAs was weak in the middle of the organization. The absence of formal change management processes made important resource allocation decisions, trade-offs on technology, and coordination of quality processes across the systems more difficult. When the DA had more community participants, there were broader participation in the discussions, the debates were more intense, and the DA stayed on track.

The results from the survey data revealed that the higher percentage of physicians the result was less comprehensive on the other hand when the DA had a high concentration of community participants, the vision was more comprehensive. Overall the DA affected a variety of changes in organization either directly or indirectly. The organization’s initial use of the DA process as a strategic visioning intervention persists in the minds of most organization members. DAs cannot do everything and complementary governance and implementation processes are necessary.
Discus the strengths and weaknesses of the assessment. Once the intervention is done it should be evaluated to determine if it is producing the intended results. Feedback gives the desired result if the implementation of the interventions were correct. The strengths of the evaluation were collected through interviews and surveys whose results were positive. Almost everyone “buy into” the clinical strategies, the DAs were a great energizer hence a high level of commitment.
Clarity was gained at the top management level and many physicians. The involvement of community participants resulted in a more comprehensive vision. While the weaknesses involve the organization’s ability to leverage the change, the data revealed a more complex set of issues, weak perception in the middle of the organization, the absence of formal change management and the outcomes of meeting with top management and physicians revealed a less comprehensive vision.
Participants thought that the strategy should be more aggressive business oriented How could it have been improved? Their needed to be more internal support to leverage the change, hence people would not feel so overwhelmed by the changes. The changes needed to be programmable to facilitate a formal implementation of the intervention process. Their needed to be more sensing and calibration as it was evident that the community participants produce a more comprehensive vision.
There also need to be more internal support to assist the middle of the organization. Reward allocation could be used to gain more support from the middle organization. How much confidence do you have in the lessons learned for this organization? I have a high level of confidence in the lessons from this case because the intervention characteristics were evident and the researchers made use of the institutionalization processes.