New Baldrige Eligibility Rules Impacts Indiana Organizations

On December 21, 2011, the national Baldrige program announced via its blog that the eligibility rules for 2012 have changed. Under the new rules, organizations interested in applying for the national Baldrige Award must meet six new conditions as follows:

1. Be a previous Baldrige Award recipient
2. Have received the top-tier award from an Alliance member award program within the past 5 years
3. Have received a site visit at the national level within the past 5 years
4. Have received a combined scoring band range of 8 or better (e.g., process band 4 and results band 4) in the past 5 years
5. Have 25% or more of your employees/staff outside of your organization's home state
6. Have no Alliance member program available for your organization.

This impacts interested Indiana organizations because Indiana now does have an Alliance member program  available: The Partnership for Excellence.

In other words, if your organization is just getting started with the Baldrige journey, it generally must win The Partnership for Excellence's not yet named Indiana award before it can apply for the national Baldrige award.

Given the amount and type of assistance The Partnership for Excellence makes available to organizations, this change will likely accelerate the Baldrige learning curve for an organization rather than slow down or delay progress towards excellence.

You can learn more about The Partnership for Excellence at its website: http://www.thepartnershipforexcellence.org/html/home.htm

You can learn more about the national Baldrige program at its website: http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/

Release of 2010 Indiana Medical Errors Report Poorly Covered by Media

Although dated for 11/7/2011, the 2010 Indiana Medical Error Report was released to the public on 11/28/2011.

The link to the press release is here.
The link to the report itself is here.
The link to the data tables (containing facility specific numbers) is here.

In the month since the release of this report, coverage from the media has been disappointing. A brief google scan of Indiana news coverage shows the following:

• The Indy Star and WTHR carried the same small piece on 11/29/2011 highlighting that bed sores were the most commonly reported error and foreign objects left inside patients after surgery was the second. To it's credit, the report did not single out any hospital with high raw numbers.
• However, on the day that the report was released, WTHR posted a separate story on its website highlighting that medical errors had reached a new high. Unfortunately, it reported raw numbers of events at various central Indiana facilities without any type of responsible interpretation. This story did attempt to offer readers advice on how to stay safe, however, the reporter clearly confused prevention concepts (surgery site marking, patient turning) with error reporting ("...what can you do if you suspect an error?).
• On 12/2/2011, the Palladium-Item from Richmond, IN, carried a story highlighting the performance of its local hospital (Reid). It focused on the two patients that Reid reported fell in 2010 causing serious disability or death. It appears that the reporter (Pam Tharp) did interview hospital officials (a vice president, the director of patient safety and quality, and a spokesman) and provided quotes to balance the reported numbers. The story then proceeded to report the 5-Year reporting high, but noted possible explanations (changes in operational definitions) for this.
• The Herald-Bulletin (Anderson), ran a story on 12/8/2011 describing the performance of the two area hospitals. The CEO of Community hospital provided detail of the hospitals process to minimize missing sponges and that it seeks to learn from its errors. The President of Saint John's Hospital and its CNO both provided similar detail as to how it prevents bed sores. Healthcare quality professionals will be happy to see that this article also noted that "Medical errors generally are not the sole result of people’s actions but rather the failure of the systems and processes used in providing health care... The requirement to report events identifies persistent problems, encourages increased awareness of patient safety issues and assists in the development of evidence-based initiatives to improve patient safety."

Of the above referenced coverage, it would appear that the reporter from the Herald-Bulletin (Abbey Dole) provided the most responsible reporting of the annual Medical Error report. With a story that could easily be irresponsibly covered to incite and inflame the public, this reporter educated the public on how the medical error reporting system helps healthcare in Indiana become safer.

CMS Approves ACO for Central Indiana

Yesterday, CMS announced that 32 applications for Pioneer ACO from health systems across the country have been approved. The Franciscan Alliance was approved for the Indianapolis and Central Indiana region.

The press release from the Franciscan Alliance can be found here: http://stfrancisnews.blogspot.com/2011/12/franciscan-alliance-selected-to.html

The press release fact sheet from CMS announcing the 32 Pioneer ACOs can be found here: http://www.cms.gov/apps/media/press/factsheet.asp?Counter=4225

Over the past several months, the concept and model of an ACO has changed several times. This announcement is specifically for the Pioneer ACO model. Applications for the Advanced Payment Model is not due to CMS until Jan 2012.

This link will take you to a general resource about the Pioneer ACO Model: http://innovations.cms.gov/initiatives/aco/pioneer/

This link will take you to a general resource about the Advanced Payment ACO Model: http://innovations.cms.gov/initiatives/aco/advance-payment/

The most recent final rules from CMS concerning ACOs was published Oct 20, 2011. That document can be downloaded here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-02/pdf/2011-27461.pdf

Healthcare quality professionals will be most interested in the list of 33 quality measures that will impact payments to ACOs.  That list is on page 67889, or the 88th page into this above document.