IWK Health Centre: IWK Strategic Plan

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IWK Strategic Plan

Below is the IWK Strategic Plan Progress Report released in the fall of 2010. This report provides an update on our progress in implementing our Strategic Plan in alignment with its five Key Directions: Helping Families be Healthy and get the Best Care, Becoming A High Performance Organization, Using Resources Wisely, Keeping Patients Safe, and Being the Best Teachers and Researchers.

IWK Strategic Plan Progress Report Fall 2010

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A Strategic Plan Update – October 27, 2010

Over the last few years, the IWK has made significant progress in implementing our Strategic Plan through our five key directions - Helping Families be Healthy and get the Best Care, Becoming A High Performance Organization, Using Resources Wisely, Keeping Patients Safe, and Being the Best Teachers and Researchers.

Strategic projects were identified under these key directions. The teams engaged in these projects have now completed their work and submitted final reports. Strategies based on these projects are now being implemented in several areas, including Patient Safety Strategy Mapping, Diversity and Inclusion, and Clinical Care Delivery Review.

A Strategic Plan Progress Report was developed in the fall of 2009 which provided the IWK Board of Directors, staff and physicians with an update on the strategic plan, where we have been, and where we are going. A similar report will be released in December of 2010.

In April of this year we shared IWK Strategic Priorities for 2010/11; Meeting our Targets, Implementing Models of Care throughout the IWK, Improving our Technology, and Developing our Human Resource Strategy. With these new strategic priorities has been the development of strategic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will help the organization track the progress we are making towards meeting our strategic goals.

For more information, please contact Theresa Rogers, Coordinator, IWK Change Management Office, at 902-470-6896 or Mary-Ann Hiltz, Vice President, Strategy and Organizational Performance, at 902-470-6632.

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October 30, 2008

Turning strategy into action
~Excerpts from a speech by Anne McGuire, President and CEO

It is no secret that there are serious issues impacting the health of our population here in Nova Scotia – issues that cannot be solved solely within hospitals or even within the health care system itself. We, at the IWK, are working hand in hand with the province, within new programs being created, to bring our expertise to the table.

The changes that are happening now as part of our strategic plan are not happening in isolation, within our own four walls. They are part of a bigger picture. We are part of a significant and far-reaching transformation.
That said, here is an update on the progress we’ve made on our strategic plan to date.

Getting to this point
Our strategic plan began in June 2005. A that point, we took a hard look at who we are, why we are here, what we do, and why we do things the way we do. In June 2006, we unveiled the Health Centre’s new vision, mission and core values – echoing the words back what we heard from across the IWK community. The next step in the process came in January 2007 when we celebrated the launch of our key directions and goals, recognizing that much of the hard work is yet to come. Then, in the summer of 2007, we launched our first “wave” of strategic plan projects, with wave 2 projects launching last winter (2008), and wave 3 projects set to launch in 2009.

How does the strategic plan work?
We recognized the need to establish a robust structure around the change being implemented through our strategic plan. To that end, we’ve assembled the right resources, time and training.

For every key direction established, strategic projects were formed; people were assigned to explicitly focus on a specified goal for concentrated periods of time. These project leads have built teams to move the projects forward.

To manage and coordinate all of this activity, the Change Management Office was created to help address roadblocks, and track the progress of the projects and report it to the rest of the organization. The office has also been the vital, ongoing connector between the Executive Leadership Team and the execution of the strategic plan.

What do the waves mean?
The waves are our way of referring to a series of strategic projects.

Wave one strategic projects include:

• Patient-care driven model for the IWK Village
• Program Leadership Structure
• Women’s Health Strategy
• e-Health Strategy
• Raise the Bar on Leadership Effectiveness
• Support Service Delivery Review
• Clinical Care Delivery Review
• Business Intelligence Model for resource decision-making
• Patient Safety Strategy Mapping
• Research Strategic Overview

Wave two strategic projects include:

• Youth Health
• Primary Health Framework
• Physician/Dentist Resource Plan
• Public Education on Evolving Mandate
• Healthy Workplace Strategy
• Diversity and Inclusion Strategy
• Incentive Program
• Resource Alignment with Strategic Plan
• Capital Campaign Priority Setting

Wave three strategic projects will be launched in 2009

Stay tuned as we work through these projects en route to our vision of Healthy families. The best care.

Posted September 21st, 2007

Strategic Actions: Three Waves
~Excerpts from a speech by Anne McGuire, President and CEO

Strategic Directions: Three Waves

“As CEO, I think a lot about change and leadership. Both are very hard to nail down. In health care, there is an uneasy alliance between clinicians and administrators. It is perhaps one of our most significant failures – to understand each other’s roles and responsibilities and to lead for change.

Here at the IWK, the burning question is, why do we need to go somewhere else – isn’t ‘where we are’ fine enough?

In short, no. Change is going to be a necessity. The Canadian healthcare system is faced with many urgent and complex problems. So is the IWK, as a specialized, research-based health care facility in the Maritimes. Our population has the highest incidence of many chronic diseases, including cancer. Out of these and other realities, our Strategic Plan was born.

From the beginning of this process, we heard and saw and felt that the teams of employees, physicians, volunteers, families and partners that make up the IWK community were willing to make a firm commitment to a new Strategic Plan. The key word now is action.

We have developed a series of Strategic Actions. Each of these is linked back to the Five Key Directions we unveiled in January: helping families be healthy and get the best care; becoming a high performance organization; using resources wisely; keeping patients safe; and being the best teachers and researchers.

These Strategic Actions are the ‘to do’ list of the Strategic Plan – the major projects that we must take on in order to move in the direction of our mission and vision. We have structured the Actions so that 10 get going now, in June of 2007 – this is Wave One.

Wave One Strategic Actions include:

Patient-care driven model for the IWK Village
Program Management Structure
Women’s Health Strategy
e-Health Strategy
Raise the Bar on Leadership Effectiveness
Support Service Delivery Review
Clinical Care Delivery Review
Business Intelligence Model for resource decision-making
Patient Safety Strategy Mapping
Research Strategic Overview

Soon, Wave Two will begin, followed by Wave Three in the spring of 2008. As we move forward, we will take risks – we will be innovators – and we will be leaders in health care.