Innovative thinking for the improvement of medical systems

If health care systems are not delivering the desired results, those system s must be changed in some way. Innovative thinking is sometimes needed to g enerate ideas for improvement. Many persons erroneously believe that innova tive thinking is a special gift or that it requires an air of lightheartedn ess that seems inappropriate in a health ca re setting. Current research in the cognitive sciences has yielded methods to help individual persons and groups generate innovative ideas. These methods do not require any special gift and can be practiced in a serious way. Through a case example from a h ealth maintenance organization, this paper shows that, given some direction , groups of health care professionals can produce useful and innovative ide as. The tools of idea generation are based on three principles: mental atte ntion, escape, and movement. Activities that help persons pay attention to their current situations in a different way, escape their current mental pa tterns about the situation, and maintain movement in their thoughts support efforts to generate innovative, testable ideas for health system improveme nts. This paper illustrates several methods of stimulating innovative think ing and shows the ways in which they can be applied in health care.