“Inherent in implementation was the concept of developing a learning organization. If you are going to change, you are going to have to give people the tools to help change,” said Peggy J. Nazarey, MSN, RN, director of nursing at Harbor–UCLA and assistant dean for clinical affairs at the UCLA School of Nursing, who was the medical center’s project director. Harbor–UCLA created a “tool kit of ways to manage change,” which included focus groups, strategies for managing transition, and changes in the way meetings are run, she said.

One concrete example of change at the 553-bed hospital is the patient participation group, run under the leadership of Thresia Nayagan, MBA, RN, associate director of nursing. Presently, the group is used as a forum for ideas on developing a patient resource center, but members also give input on issues critical to overall care.

An interdisciplinary team also banded together to create a prototype for a “patient-centered unit” that is being duplicated throughout the medical center. “Patient-centered” means the services are designed around the patient’s needs. Team members examined events that felt “disjointed” or overwhelming to a patient and tried to change them. The changes they made ranged from reducing the number of care providers a patient comes in contact with every day to empowering employees “on the front line” to act on a patient’s need.

Harbor–UCLA’s focus on broad changes and on development of systems and tools to help organizations bring those modifications about will be described in an upcoming booklet, Community Design Model: A Catalyst for Organizational Change.