How Kaiser Permanente encourages healthcare innovation

Innovation is more than a buzzword in an industry as volatile as healthcare. Kaiser Permanente, one of the country's largest health systems, is using "pull strategies" to attract people to new ideas, according to Benjamin K. Chu, M.D., executive vice president of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Health Plan, based in Oakland, California.

"If you want to break out of the mold, you have to think completely differently," said Chu, a keynote speaker at the National Healthcare Innovation Summit held in Chicago this week, as reported by Becker's Health IT & CIO Review.

Kaiser Permanente, whch serves more than 10 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia, employs pull strategies that work to draw people in, versus push strategies, which are characterized by a person having a great idea and pushing others to adopt it, said Chu, who also serves as group president of Kaiser Permanente's southern California and Georgia regions and president of Kaiser Permanente Southern California.