NYU: Groundbreaking Paper Explores and Shares Lessons from Interdisciplinary Innovation Teams in Healthcare

Healthcare organizations face resource and team member shortages, while their services are in especially high demand in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patricia Satterstrom, assistant professor at NYU Wagner, has just come out with the results of a 20-month study of two federally qualified health center (FQHC) innovation teams. The study, “Engaging Interdisciplinary Innovation Teams in Federally Qualified Health Centers,” published in Medical Care Research and Review, advances the understanding of interdisciplinary innovation teams in healthcare organizations.  One of the first papers to examine the skills, behaviors, and interactions that help time-strapped team members stay engaged in innovation work and ensure their ideas are implemented, the research was produced with co-authors Olivia Jung of University of California, Los Angeles, and Sara Singer of Stanford University School of Medicine.

“I am immensely proud of the findings this paper unearths,” said Satterstrom. “This is a critical time in the healthcare world as systems consolidate, workers face resource and time constraints, and demand for care overwhelms clinics. Our findings not only highlight how teams in the midst of these challenges unite to improve patient and team member experiences and care, they also provide practical suggestions organization can implement to support work that helps improve how their clinics function.”

The research marks Satterstrom’s fourth paper published since July 2023 that expands the understanding of what enables and hinders frontline ideas from being implemented for the enhancement of both patient care and employee satisfaction. The other papers, published in Health Care Management Review and Journal of General Internal Medicine, look at frontline workers’ voice, and the benefits from listening to frontline workers as well as integrating them in quality improvement initiatives.

“Frontline healthcare workers are critically positioned to understand improvement needs, generate ideas to fulfill those needs, voice those ideas, and implement them. Although we focus on healthcare, an area where there is immediate need for and challenges to innovation work, these practices are applicable beyond the healthcare sector. I hope the lessons and practices shared in these papers have lasting impact and help teams forwarding such efforts,” said Satterstrom.

Each of Satterstrom’s recent papers can be found digitally via the following links:

·         Engaging interdisciplinary innovation teams in Federally Qualified Health Centers. Medical Care Research and Review (March, 2024)

·         Overcoming walls and voids: Responsive practices that enable frontline workers to feel heard. Health Care Management Review. 49(2).

·         Voice is not enough: A multi-level model of how frontline voice can reach implementation. Health Care Management Review, 49(1).

·         Ideas from the Frontline: Improvement Opportunities for Federally Qualified Health Centers. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 38(13).