Merrill Warschoff Press is NACHC’s Senior Vice President for Development and Innovation.
At NACHC’s inaugural InnovationEx event in Las Vegas, NACHC CEO Dr. Kyu Rhee presented a new framework for thinking about innovation at community health centers. The 5 X’s of Health Center Innovation capture the key steps health centers need to leverage to innovate:
eXplore. Explore the opportunities, challenges and potential solutions affecting health centers and the people they serve. This will likely include really looking at the specific problem you think you want to solve, researching what others have done in similar situations and learning more about the conditions and contributing factors at play.
eXperiment. Experiment and test solutions – and even fail, gather patient, staff and partner input. Experimentation includes creation of a solutions(s), and engaging with the people and organizations most impacted – especially patients and staff.
eXcel. Excel by refining and improving the solution. After testing one or more solutions and gathering input and feedback, during the Excel stage, you should focus on making your chosen solution the best it can be.
eXpand. Expand, scale and catalyze innovations, learn from both successes and failures and assure sustainability. Here, you can bring your innovation to additional sites or services and build sustainability for the future.
eXchange. Exchange insights and learnings and scale solutions to advance impact. The exchange phase is most impactful when you start sharing your innovation externally and broadly so others can learn from it (and from any success or failures) and adopt it for their own opportunities and challenges.
NACHC’s Center for Community Health Innovation (CCHI) is here to help health centers, PCA’s and HCCN’s not only implement the 5 X’s, but especially to serve as a host or convener for the Exchange of innovations among the health center ecosystem.
Other resources:
- The CCHI Innovictionary is an innovation dictionary that defines innovation tools and concepts with a health center lens and provide curated resources.
How do the 5 X’s resonate with your health center innovation experience? Have a tweak or a suggestion? Want to be the first to hear about new innovation opportunities? Please write to us at innovation@nachc.org.
This post is part of NACHC’s Innovation Blog Series. This series is hosted by our Center for Community Health Innovation.