Decentralized Decision-Making: SCF’s Functional Committee Structure

In the field of health care, it is often important for organizations to be able to make changes quickly and efficiently. Decentralizing the decision-making process can support quick improvement, but it is important for this decision-making to be structured in a way that supports the organization’s mission and vision. Southcentral Foundation uses the Functional Committee Structure (FCS) as a way to increase organizational involvement in decision-making, strategic planning, improvement and innovation, and communication.

The FCS was first implemented in 2008 following a Baldrige feedback report SCF received (SCF uses the Baldrige Framework for improvement and is a two-time recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award). The report noted that all business decisions were being made by a small group of leaders, which caused delays in decision-making, gaps in knowledge transfer, and limited input from customer-owners on key business processes and work systems. The FCS was developed to address these issues and has changed over the years with multiple assessments completed in order to improve the functioning of the committees.

The FCS consists of four oversight committees, each of which has multiple subcommittees:

• Operations Committee. This committee is focused on the effective day-to-day operations of programs, and provides an ongoing evaluation of individual and department performance.
• Quality Assurance Committee. This committee is focused on ensuring compliance with standards, regulations, ongoing evaluation of clinical standards and practices, credentialing and licensure, and risk management.
• Process Improvement Committee. This committee is focused on improving the performance of systems and processes that support SCF’s operation which includes developing, piloting, deploying, and integrating improved or enhanced systems and processes.
• Quality Improvement Committee. This committee is focused on improving clinical or educational quality which includes developing, piloting, deploying, and integrating targeted clinical or systems improvements, as well as providing education on best practices and oversight to SCF’s Clinical Core Business Groups.

Each committee consists of leaders from across SCF to evaluate, analyze, and generate ideas for improvement, and to make decisions on processes, systems, and procedures. The committees do not replace the function of, or make decisions for, SCF’s departments, but rather provide input from the customer perspective to guide decision-making. All decisions for businesses/functions of SCF are made with input from the customers of the businesses/functions.

For more information on the FCS, or any other aspect of SCF’s Nuka System of Care, feel free to contact the SCF Learning Institute.