Implementation of LSS Belt Recertification Process for VISN 8

The VA's VISN 8 improvement program has trained over 5,000 staff in Lean Six Sigma principles during Yellow, Green and Black Belt trainings.  A majority of the staff trained went on to complete successful improvement projects to become certified.  Since embarking on the journey towards becoming a Highly Reliable Organization (HRO), with Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) being of the three pillars, along with Leadership Commitment and Culture of Safety, the need for capturing of various improvement efforts has expanded outside of just focused project work.  With the goal of enhancing the Systems Redesign improvement program and keep VISN 8 growing, learning and improving, a Belt Recertification process was implemented with multiple pathways for Certified Belts to remain active in supporting a culture of improvement, and allowed the organization for a way to truely capture all the improvement work going on across its' care sites with finite resources.  

Gain an understanding of how a Belt Recertification process can be implemented across a large scale organization.

Determine the value of maintaining continuity of improvement efforts over time to reduce the attrition of a culture of improvement.

Accurately capture the improvement efforts ongoing across the organization and increase the ROI for their LSS Belt training program.

Author

In August of 2021, Chadd Canode became the Improvement & Innovation Program Manager for VA Sunshine Healthcare Network (VISN 8), which is the nation’s largest system of hospitals and clinics serving a population of more than 1.9 million Veterans with over 36,000 employees across 7 VA medical facilities and over 60 outpatient clinics in Florida, South Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  He provides oversight and leadership for the implementation, spread, and maintenance of Systems Redesign processes and techniques across all VISN 8 facilities to assess current organizational performance, identifying existing or potential problem areas, while emphasizing innovation, and utilizes change management techniques while recommending corrective action or redesign.  During his 19-year VA career, Chadd led improvement work at the Tampa, Orlando and Northern Indiana Health Care System VAs. Chadd received his BS in Business Finance and MBA in Accounting, both from Indiana Wesleyan University.