Continuous improvement is most effective when it’s not limited to a few trained practitioners. UC Davis Health’s Patient Contact Center (PCC) is demonstrating how building shared Lean skills across an entire team can lay the groundwork for meaningful change. 

The UC Davis Health Patient Contact Center (PCC) recently partnered with AdminIT’s Office of Business Transformation (OBT) to give employees a common foundation for recognizing waste, challenging assumptions, and thinking differently about how work gets done.

To make the learning relevant, participants explored a real-world process: the patient scheduling journey following hospital discharge. The goal wasn’t to redesign the process that day, but to practice seeing waste together – looking beyond individual tasks to understand how the end-to-end process affects the patient experience. 

The exercise sparked thoughtful questions, challenged assumptions, and encouraged employees to consider opportunities for improvement. Feedback was positive: 100% of survey respondents said they could apply the learning to their work, and 90% rated the session engaging. 

Building Capability Before Tackling Change

What makes this approach noteworthy isn’t simply the training itself. PCC leadership, including Jordan Franck, Executive Director of Patient Access, made a deliberate investment in building improvement capability across the team. Special thanks to Leesa Cunningham, Nicki Richards, Cassie Jensen, Leticia Sanchez-Warter, and Jules Miller for helping coordinate the experience. 

The takeaway for Lean practitioners and leaders across UC Davis? You don’t need to wait for a formal improvement project to start building a culture of continuous improvement. When employees closest to the work share the skills and language to recognize waste, ask better questions, and see the bigger picture, they’re better positioned to identify opportunities and lead meaningful improvements.

Before asking a team to improve a process, help them learn to see it differently – together.