Case Study: Positioning for Innovation.

Using industry insight to foster innovation across a health system.

Our Challenge

Benefis, a large integrated health system based in Great Falls Montana, has made significant investments and improvements in its technology, systems and service capabilities in the past few years.

By early 2019, senior leaders were ready to build from this foundation and were seeking insights from healthcare leaders as to how the organization could position itself to foster and sustain innovation. Pivot Point Consulting was engaged to help frame Benefis’ questions and goals, provide market insights and help the organization capitalize on its technology and resources.

The Approach

The Pivot Point Consulting team used a discover, plan and implement approach to the Positioning for Innovation engagement with Benefis:

Discover: solidify project drivers and goals and assess Benefis’ current state.

Plan: develop research questions and interview executives at healthcare organizations recognized as market innovators to understand their drivers and approach, and synthesize findings into a set of common strategic, technical and cultural attributes.

Implement: help Benefis approach near term projects with a new lens on innovation.

Common themes emerged from Pivot Point’s market research, including:

An organizational strategy and commitment — and often, a C-suite visionary — are instrumental to fostering innovation.
Data, not technology or systems, are the currency of innovation in today’s healthcare market.
Building a culture that embraces change, creativity and collaboration between IT, operations and clinicians can be challenging, but is vital to success.
Innovation is organization-specific, and achievable by every organization on their own terms.

The Client’s ROI

The findings from Pivot Point Consulting’s market research have been broadly socialized and applied across Benefis. Jon Barrow, Project Director, notes he uses the insights from the research to frame how he works with project teams and encourages team members to bring outside- the-box ideas to their collective problem solving. Mark Simon, SVP and CIO, reflects that balancing the strategic, technical and cultural aspects of innovation helped them to become the first health system in the nation to successfully integrate bedside infusion pumps to the MEDITECH EHR.

Going forward, the organization will continue to use the findings and the framework to drive innovation and creativity.

Client Testimonial