When I first read the article, I was shocked, elated, and confused. How was it that an Emergency Room doctor went to Disney World and came home with a plan to revolutionize how a community engages with urgent healthcare? It’s the kind of innovation story that’s mythologized, but rarely true. Yet, here it was — and in Canada, too.
The innovation is as clever as it is simple.
Sault Area Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario — the sole emergency department serving a community of 115,000 people — launched a virtual waiting room system inspired by Disney's FastPass, allowing non-urgent patients to wait at home rather than in the ER. Since launching last summer, the program has been a resounding success: for roughly 90% of patients who join the virtual queue, the time from triage to a physician's initial assessment dropped from more than 6 hours to about 3. The share of patients who left without being treated fell dramatically — from 13% among those who didn't use the virtual queue to just 3% among those who did. Nearly 500 patients have used the virtual waiting room so far, with 87% reporting they were very satisfied, and staff noted improved workflow and reduced stress as additional benefits.
The idea draws on the SCAMPER approach we discussed in an earlier issue. SCAMPER is a means of fostering creativity while also encouraging us to look around us for solutions to problems similar to our own. In the case of healthcare wait times, the similarity between ERs and Space Mountain becomes clear. SCAMPER stands for: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, and Reverse (SCAMPER).
What Dr. Stephen Smith did was work with his team to take observations about the FastPass concept and apply them to healthcare, which had the same fundamental issue: people waiting their turn for service. They took the concept of a digital placeholder (the same as with the FastPass) to coordinate arrival timing and reduce bottlenecks when combined with a clinical triage mechanism.
What Smith and his team know all too well is that not every trip to the ER has the same level of urgency. People are often coming to ERs because they have no other viable option for dealing with a health problem that might not require critical care but still causes distress, discomfort, or the potential to exacerbate existing health problems if not addressed in a timely way.
Copy Cat Innovation and Design
Employing a copycat design strategy can be enormously advantageous. Even before he returned from his vacation, I’ll bet Dr. Smith spent time reflecting on what it was like waiting for rides with his children, the time spent being uncertain, and the relief that comes with knowing there is freedom in how you spend your time. Research on waiting times shows that people are willing to wait longer and more comfortably when they know what time they’ll be seen, compared with being uncertain, even when the wait time is considerably shorter.
It’s less about the time and more about uncertainty that causes distress.
A copycat approach lets us learn lessons before we even start prototyping. Dr. Smith — or anyone who’s been to a theme park with long lines — knows this even if they’ve never had to wait at the Emergency Room.
How can we use this copycat approach strategically as part of the design of an innovation?
We begin by asking the following questions:
What resources are employed in these actions to make something work? Do we have them at our disposal, or can we create ones that are similar to them?
What knowledge or skills are required to do these activities?
What circumstances are present in these actions? Did they help or hurt what was accomplished?
What outcomes emerged from taking these actions, and can we identify them?
What might this look like if we did those actions? What do we need that we don’t have?
What negatives might emerge from these actions?
Copy Cat allows us to dissect the core components of someone else’s actions and consider how we might apply those lessons to our work.
By proactively adopting this approach, we can also benefit enormously from other byproducts of an applied, curiosity-driven way of engaging with similar services and products.
We sharpen our observation skills
We begin learning more about our market
We open our eyes to new ways to do something and the constraints others operate in
It engages us in reflective practice about what we do and why
It keeps us active in our market
It builds systematic learning and praxis into our organization
We enhance our curiosity and use it to channel energy in our organization
The benefits are many, the method is simple, yet it’s often neglected in practice. As a leader, create time and space in your team meetings to regularly discuss learnings and observations. Brief your team on ways to enhance their observation skills, identifying opportunities arising from our experience to address the challenges you face.
Go copy something and create an innovation that might surprise you.
Key References:
https://macleans.ca/society/health/at-this-er-patients-wait-at-home/
https://sah.on.ca/programs-services/emergency-services/virtual-home-waiting-room/
https://www.cense.ca/copy-cat-learning-through-observation/
