Three healthcare organizations among 2011 winners
WASHINGTON – Three healthcare organizations and one nonprofit business have received the 2011 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the highest federal honor for performance excellence through innovation. This was the first year that three healthcare organizations were selected at one time.
The healthcare honorees are Henry Ford Health System of Detroit, Mich.; Schneck Medical Center in Seymour, Ind.; and the Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage, Alaska. The fourth, non-healthcare Baldrige awardee is the nonprofit Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis, Mo.
The Baldrige Awards recognize organizational excellence in seven criteria: leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce focus; operations focus; and results. While the Baldrige Award was established in 1987, healthcare organizations first became eligible to receive recognition in 1999.
While healthcare was the dominant category in the 2011 Baldrige competition, the three honorees are very different.
Henry Ford Health System is one of the top integrated delivery systems in the United States. With seven hospitals and more than 140 care sites in the Detroit metro area, Henry Ford ranks in the 90th percentile for 75 percent of the core measures publicly reported for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The health system maintained a positive net operating income of greater than $25 million per year from 2007 to 2010 despite significant increases in uncompensated care, which grew from approximately $130 million in 2007 to approximately $200 million in 2010.
Very different is Schneck Medical Center, a 93-bed facility in rural Jackson County, Ind. While serving a much smaller population base than Henry Ford Health, SMC ranks second among 94 hospitals in its geographic region and outperformed all local competitors when measured for its value-based purchasing.
“Schneck first implemented the Baldrige framework four years ago to accelerate and prioritize our performance excellence journey,” said Gary A. Meyer, president and CEO of SMC. “The Baldrige criteria and our commitment to quality, satisfaction and continuous improvement have helped us toward our vision to be an organization of excellence.”
Meyer said patient satisfaction surveys reflect SMC's year-to-year favorable performance. The medical center meets or exceeds top 10 percent or top 25 percent levels on nine of 10 Press Ganey measures, including inpatient quality of care, inpatient family support, inpatient coordination of care and inpatient customer service.
“Receiving this award is an extraordinary accomplishment and recognition of (our) commitment to continuously improve patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care,” Meyer said.
The most inspiring of the 2011 Baldrige honorees may be the Southcentral Foundation, a nonprofit healthcare organization established in 1982 to improve the health and social conditions of Alaska Native and American Indian people.
While based in Anchorage, SCF's total coverage area spans some 100,000 square miles. The organization operates two primary care centers, two clinics and 16 subregional centers that SCF partners with to provide regional support.
In 2010, SCF achieved the highest level of Patient Centered Medical Home recognition from the National Committee on Quality Assurance.
“(The Baldrige) award honors the collective effort of our tribal leadership, customer-owners and employees who have pursued excellence,” said James Segura, chair of the Southcentral Foundation Board of Directors.
Among the wellness objectives set forth by SCF is an effort to reduce the incidence and improve the management of diabetes, a condition experienced by Alaska Native and American Indian people at twice the national rate. Since 2009, performance levels for diabetes care exceed the 90th percentile of the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set, a tool used by the majority of U.S. health plans to measure performance on important dimensions of care and service.
The 2011 Baldrige Award recipients will be presented with their awards at an April 2012 ceremony in Washington, D.C.
