An Innovation Lab with Guelph General Hospital
Timeline: 2016-2018
Client: Guelph General Hospital
Guelph General Hospital (GGH) is a leader for quality care and patient experience in the Waterloo Wellington Region. In 2016, Overlap and GGH established a Health Innovation Lab to help the hospital move forward on strategic priorities, gather input from staff, patients, families, and community members, and build the skills of its employees. Located at the Hospital, the Innovation Lab provided a safe space for ideas to be explored and tested, for community engagement to be planned and delivered, and for insights to be shared. Overlap regularly met with several groups and committees in the hospital to support projects ranging from a long-term, cross-community health strategy to patient-centred health interventions.
Some of the Lab’s activities and outcomes included:
Facilitated initial Design Workshops and built capacity on the GGH team to lead subsequent workshops—including an Improving Patient Experience Design Lab, a Special Care Nursery Design Lab to enhance the Hospital’s spaces, and an Improving Communications Design Lab linking internal and external providers.
Established an Agile project management approach with several GGH teams and provided ongoing Agile coaching.
Provided a range of training and development opportunities for the GGH leadership team and Lab working groups, and a series of Lunch & Learn sessions available to all hospital staff, and ongoing individual mentorship sessions.
Reduced 30-Day Readmission Rates for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) following the comprehensive care revisions of the COPD Working Group. Overlap supported the working group as they connected GGH professionals with respiratory practitioners in the community to strengthen the patient experience for those with COPD.
Produced a Long Term Vision and 5 Year Plan for Information, Communication, Automation and Technology (ICAT) with health providers in Guelph Wellington.
