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w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m M a r c h 2 0 1 6 • I NSIGH T | 21 Shawn Kienert Rob Worth administration, they tend to lose touch with patients. Bringing someone in with an outside perspective was an enriching approach. "All of our experience was geared toward running the business, so we become administrators who actually reach out and learn more about the clinical side," he says. Kubiak says he was influenced by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and his theory of disruptive innovation — making things that are expensive and complicated become simple and affordable. Coupled with Kubiak's background costing components and products at Plexus, he was constantly thinking about how to make things less expensive. "So take those concepts in thinking about what can happen in health care, where we've got a system that is very expensive and inaccessible and make it cost effective and accessible," Kubiak says. "at's the challenge." Patient experience O ne of the first things the doctors wanted Kubiak to do was look at OSI's worker's compensation system. Communication with multiple parties was slow and cumbersome, taking place by fax (even today, in some places). Aer searching for a better system, and finding none, Kubiak asked Paul omas, a programmer and another former Plexus employee, to help. omas, who is now OSI's director of information technology, created ConnectED, a data soware tool that allows all parties to communicate and track patients via the Internet. e system is unique in the country. Kubiak also wanted input on improving the physical experience of the OSI building. He called in Steve Tyink of Miron Construction Co., Inc., which built the facility. Tyink, who serves as Vice President of Business Innovation at Miron Construction, told Kubiak to go stand out in the parking lot and pretend to be a patient. "At that time, we had no signage on the front of our building that says 'Main Entrance,'" Kubiak says. "We had no marking on the pavement that showed where a patient should walk. It was totally confusing." Patients are now greeted by concierges, most of whom are former patients. eir main task is to simply point patients in the right direction. In a corner of OSI's spacious, natural-toned lobby, an InstyMeds pill dispenser allows patients to go home with their prescriptions. But it wasn't enough to have one, it had to look right. Originally the dispensers — about the size of a photo booth — only came in blue and gray. "When they delivered the unit, I said, 'You've got to come and get it,'" Kubiak says. "ey said, 'What's wrong?' I said, 'It looks terrible, it looks like a piece of manufacturing equipment in my lobby.' We were the first unit they sold that was not blue and gray. Now they sell them in a bunch of colors." OSI also has its own MRI and a radiologist who sends patients home the same day with a plan of care. OSI shares the MRI with Fox Valley Hematology & Oncology, which is connected to OSI's building by a corridor they call "the link." FVHO, in turn, has imaging equipment that OSI can use. Also within the OSI complex is Great Lakes Orthotics, where orthotist Perry Alger can scan a patient's body, cut a model out of foam with a CNC machine and make a back brace onsite. "I was spending $15,000 a year on Federal Express charges to have the braces flown in overnight all the time," Alger says. "So I needed to come up with a better way of doing it." Recovery Inn T hat's been a recurring theme at OSI: How can they come up with a better way of doing things? When OSI surgeons heard about other groups performing total joint replacements on an outpatient basis, Kubiak and the surgeons visited nine sites nationwide to learn about it. "ere were a lot of unique solutions out there," Kubiak says. "We knew we wanted to keep people onsite, but we didn't have a way to do that just yet. One of our nurses came back and said, 'What about a skilled nursing facility?' I thought, 'Holy cats, let's think about that,' and ultimately, that was the idea that stuck." e Recovery Inn is the nation's first orthopedics-only recovery facility. It's designed like a hotel — patients check in first, knowing which room they'll have aer surgery. Missing are the constant electronic alarms [ c o n t i n u e d ] » Brian Zoeller OSI expansion Miron Construction will add a 2,000-square-foot expansion to OSI, to be completed in May. The $1.6 million project will include a new sterile storage area and interior renovations to an operating room and sterile processing area. The project also will include updates to other operating rooms as well as mechanical equipment updates.