An annual program in Springfield, modeled after the eFactory's Start Up Weekend for entrepreneurs, uses employee ideas to bring innovative practices to the workplace. The CoxHealth Innovation Accelerator brought 50 Cox employees, who applied and were chosen to take part, to the eFactory Tuesday to share ideas. As part of the program, which is in its second year, the top few ideas are chosen, and employees work in teams and with local business coaches—members of CoxHealth’s Board of Directors—to research the ideas and create plans for implementing them.
Scott Rogers, director of performance integration innovation at Cox, said teams of five to ten work together. According to Rogers, the teams crowd source and select the ideas that they want to work on and then create a plan for implementing the ideas.
"They're scrambling to get information, 'what do we need to do for market research? Who's going to use this? How do they use this? What employees do we need to add?' those kinds of things," he said.
The teams present those projects to CoxHealth leadership, which selects the projects to follow up on.
More than 20 percent of the ideas pitched during the 2016 event have been or will be used, according to CoxHealth officials. The winning idea, to offer delivery service to health system employees from the newly rebranded CoxHealth Pharmacy, has been implemented. Other ideas from last year, including those on clinic flow and expansion of other ancillary health care services, are still in the pilot phase.
