How do you measure innovation?

NORFOLK

It starts with an idea that you don’t kill even if it initially seems a little off the wall. Or following your gut instinct to take a cold call even when you know these calls usually don’t pay off.

Then it takes putting enough resources behind that initial idea to see if it will work, but not so much that it’ll doom you if it fails.

And if it does fail, as even good ideas often do, don’t punish the people who had the idea. Encourage them to think of more.

Those are some of the keys to leading an innovative company, said David Bernd, chief executive officer of Sentara Healthcare and a member of a federal commission of national business leaders that released its final report on innovation Friday.

“You have to have an atmosphere in which people feel they can take risks without worrying about their personal security,” said Bernd, who leads the largest local health care provider. If an idea doesn’t pan out, “we just move on and do something different.”

Bernd, along with leaders from such organizations as Microsoft, Wal-Mart and Harvard University, was part of 15-member Department of Commerce advisory committee charged with exploring the idea of measuring innovation.

Though the European Union has taken a stab at it over the last several years, measuring innovation and its economic effects is a tricky proposition because of all the intangibles surrounding it, Bernd said.

Among other things, the commission advised building on current federal economic measurement systems to include innovation and perhaps looking at patents and their outcomes. One challenge to overcome would be to develop a system where businesses feel they can safely share information on innovation without jeopardizing proprietary data.

“If we can quantify and celebrate innovation,” Bernd said, it will “provide good examples for others in the economy.”

Bernd said he believes he was chosen for the commission, in part, because of Sentara’s eICU system, which uses technology to allow intensive care doctors to monitor patients from a remote location, expanding their reach and improving care. Sentara now uses the system to oversee more than 100 ICU beds.

That all began with a cold sales call, “which I rarely take,” Bernd said. But that day, as the representative from the startup medical tech company was on hold, Bernd said he thought that while only 20 percent of all hospital patients are in the intensive care units, they make up 80 percent of costs. “That’s why I took the call.”

Bernd liked what he heard and had his top team investigate. In 2000, Sentara became the first health care system to use the eICU system and was cited in the innovation commission’s report. Sentara’s ICU mortality rates, lengths of stay and costs have significantly decreased, and nurse retention rates have increased.

Another idea that seemingly came out of nowhere has since yielded a new business for Sentara.

About five years ago, Dr. Gary Yates, Sentara’s chief medical officer, brought another idea to Bernd – using safety systems of the nuclear power industry as a model to improve patient safety.

Bernd said at the time he thought “that’s one of the craziest ideas I’ve ever heard.”

Yates smiled when he recalled the meeting. “Dave was surprised, but he was open and he asked some good questions,” he said.

Before the idea even got to Bernd, Yates said Sentara’s brass and doctors had been looking into ways to improve patient safety. They started out looking within the health care field, but “we didn’t think the breakthrough ideas were there,” Yates recalled.

That brought them to look at other fields where safety was at a particular premium, which in turn brought them to a couple of nuclear engineers who had begun looking at whether the ideas that have helped in the nuclear power industry could work in health care. “A lot of their approach is in creating safety habits,” Yates said.

The program was piloted at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, then went systemwide. Yates said it has resulted in a 58 percent decrease in “serious adverse events” for patients and a more than 50 percent reduction in malpractice suits and claims since 2003.

It also spawned another business for Sentara, which is a partner in HPI, or Healthcare Performance Improvement, a consulting group that helps other hospitals implement the safety systems in place at Sentara.

HPI was started in September 2006 and now has about 80 hospitals across the nation as clients.

“It’s another crazy idea that worked,” Bernd said.

Nancy Young, (757) 446-2947, nancy.young@pilotonline.com

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