With 4,500 employees across three hospitals, ProHealth Care is a leading provider of health services in the Greater Waukesha area. ProHealth wanted to take a more patient-centric approach to its care model, and leadership knew that their front-line employees—those interacting with patients on a daily basis—had the insight to help. However, the health system’s previous methods of idea-collection, prioritization, and implementation lacked efficiency and transparency, qualities ProHealth knew make for a more engaging and innovative work environment.
Since this was the first time ProHealth had engaged employees at scale, it was looking for a partner that would help in each aspect of its program, from strategic planning and promotion to developing a best practice framework to rapidly pilot ideas once selected. Ideawake’s implementation plan accounted for all three stages, from the initial engagement stage to an end-to-end system to validate, prototype, and pilot ideas selected as the most promising.
In the health system’s growth efforts, ProHealth Care launched a corporate innovation program titled InOv8. The program’s primary purpose was to create a supportive infrastructure for innovation across the entire system, in effect building an active Culture of Innovation across the region. To help promote the program’s launch, ProHealth pushed a challenge out to all 4,500 employees asking their insight on how to engage young consumers.
The 8 teams participated in a rigorous 10-week program, Ideawake’s innovation experts leading them through a series of exercises and assignments to help workshop their idea. After validating their assumptions and completing consumer interviews, each team prepared and delivered a pitch for the InOv8 council. Four of the 8 ideas ultimately moved on to the incubation phase, where each of the winning teams then created prototypes of their ideas.
Those employees shared nearly 400 ideas, 8 of which rose to the top as best of the best and entered a rapid testing phase. The InOv8 program leaders, Darcy Lorenzon and Emily Connors, formed 8 teams coinciding with each of the selected ideas, leveraging Ideawake’s Accelerator Program to help the teams bring each idea to life.
Throughout the InOv8 program, the Ideawake team administered surveys to gauge participants’ and the program’s overall performance. The responses proved that the program was a success, with 50% of respondents strongly agreeing that their efforts were supported throughout the 10 weeks. Based on its success, ProHealth plans on expanding the InOv8 program to keep encouraging a patient-first culture across the entire system.
