Three new ideas aimed at making patient care more personal have been selected as winners in the “Bear’s Den Internal Challenge: Making Patient Care More Personal” innovation challenge organized by Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH). The winning concepts, chosen from nearly 70 submissions, will be further developed and piloted at HMH locations to assess their impact on patient-centered care.
A panel including CEO Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, senior executives, board members, and outside investors evaluated the finalist presentations and decided that all three ideas would move forward. These strategies could work together to improve patient care across the HMH network.
“Our yearly Bear’s Den challenge draws from the experience of more than 30,000 team members in real-world health care practice,” said Garrett. “Steadily coming together with new ideas for improvements great and small is how we make our biggest strides as an organization.”
The Bear’s Den Innovation Program serves as HMH’s accelerator for change. It brings together experts from venture capitalists to industry leaders and internal staff to evaluate proposals and provide resources needed for implementation. The program holds quarterly meetings designed to challenge existing practices and raise standards of care in New Jersey and beyond.
“We are grateful each year, not only to those whose proposals win on the day, but to all who submit,” said Ihor Sawczuk, M.D., FACS, president of Academics, Research and Innovation at Hackensack Meridian Health. “We get better with each innovative effort that’s made and conveyed across HMH.”
All three winning ideas will undergo pilot testing before being considered for broader adoption throughout the network.
“The greatest thing about these ideas lies our knowledge that they were formed to directly improve the processes of those team members who devised them,” said Sandra Elliott, vice president and chief innovation and commercialization officer at Hackensack Meridian Health. “We think the organic nature of this innovation will make all the difference as they are implemented at scale.”
Since its inception in 2017, Bear’s Den has acted as an incubator for both internal initiatives and external companies focused on improving healthcare delivery within HMH. The program has helped advance projects aimed at streamlining services, reducing hospital readmissions, and supporting patients’ involvement in their own healthcare decisions.
