Four of Seven Organizations Honored by The Partnership for Excellence are from Indiana!

On May 8, The Partnership for Excellence (TPE) announced its 2012 Award Winners. Of the 7 award recipients, 4 are from Indiana!

The Indiana organizations are:

• Citizens Energy Group (Indianapolis) - Platinum, Governer's Award for Excellence.
• Good Samaritan Hospital (Vincennes) - Silver, Commitment to Excellence.
• Westfield Washington Schools (Westfield) - Silver, Commitment to Excellence.
• Working Well, (Michigan City) - Bronze, Pledge to Excellence.

2012 is the first year that Indiana has had a local or regional Baldrige-based performance excellence award program. The Fall of this year is also the first time that Baldrige Examiner training will be offered in Indiana (VHA Central office, Indianapolis). Note that this training is to specifically serve TPE, not the national Baldrige program.

To learn more about TPE: http://www.thepartnershipforexcellence.org/
To learn more about Baldrige Examiner training offered by the TPE: http://www.thepartnershipforexcellence.org/doc/2012_Call_for_Examiners_03-13-12.doc

The full press release announcing the 2012 TPE Award Recepitants is here: http://www.thepartnershipforexcellence.org/html/press_releases/press_release_05-08-12_Award_Recipients_2012.htm

Schneck Medical Center (Seymour, IN) posts Baldrige Application Documents

As required by all Baldrige Award winners, Schneck Medical Center has made portions of its Baldrige Application available to the public. Although the full application is not yet posted on the NIST website, most* of it can be found on the Schneck baldrige website.
Schneck Category 1 - Leadership
Schneck Category 2 - Strategic Planning
Schneck Category 3 - Focus on Patients
Schneck Category 4 - Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
Schneck Category 5 - Workforce Focus
Schneck Category 6 - Process Management

*As of April 28, 2012, the Organizational Profile and Category 7 (Results) have not yet been posted.

2012 Baldrige Examiner Training in Indiana

The Partnership for Excellence (TPE), the local / regional Baldrige program for Indiana, has announced an examiner training session in Indiana for 2012. In 2011, training sessions were only available in Ohio.

Applicants to be TPE Baldrige Examiners will have a training session at the VHA Central office in Indianapolis (by the Fashion Mall) on November 15-16, 2012. Other sessions are available throughout Ohio and West Virginia over the next month as well.

You can learn more about TPE and the process to become a TPE Baldrige Examiner at: http://www.thepartnershipforexcellence.org/

Note that under the new eligibility rules for the National Baldrige award, organizations must first participate through their local Baldrige program (unless certain exceptions apply). A great way for organizations to start their Baldrige journey is to have a trained examiner within their organization.

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/

Study Shows Baldrige Hospitals Perform Better than Non-Baldrige Hospitals

Thomson Reuters recently released a research paper investigating the performance of Baldrige hospitals vs. non-Baldrige hospitals in key outcome measures. In this study, Baldrige hospitals were defined as hospitals that have won the Baldrige award or have publicly disclosed that they have received a site visit. Non-Baldrige hospitals were the remaining hospitals in the 100 Top Hospitals data set.

Of interest to healthcare quality professionals:

• Baldrige hospitals were significantly more likley than their peers to display faster five-year performance improvement.
• Baldrige hospitals performed better than their peers in the CMS core measures by 4.90 percantage points.

Although not statistically significant, the study also showed that Baldrige hospitals performed better on the following measures than their peers:

• risk-adjusted mortality
• patient safety index
• severity-adjusted length of stay.
• adjusted operating profit margin

The research paper can be downloaded from NIST here or from Thompson Reuters here.

The NIST press release associated with this research paper can be found here. For your convenience, excerpts from this press release have been copied and pasted below. Sections of interest to healthcare quality professionals are in red with some emphasis added.

New Study Finds that Baldrige Award Recipient Hospitals Significantly Outperform their Peers

A new report has found that healthcare organizations that have won Baldrige National Quality Awards for performance excellence or been considered for a Baldrige Award site visit outperform other hospitals in nearly every metric used to determine the 100 Top Hospitals, a national recognition given by Thomson Reuters.

Commissioned by the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a private organization, and conducted by Thomson Reuters, the report found that Baldrige hospitals were six times more likely to be counted among the 100 Top Hospitals, which represent the top 3 percent of hospitals in the United States, and that they statistically outperform the 100 Top Hospitals on core measures established by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Health care organizations have accounted for more than 50 percent of Baldrige award applicants since 2005.
Baldrige hospitals also were far more likely than their peers to be cited for marked improvement over a span of five years. According to the report, "[m]ore than 27 percent of Baldrige winner hospitals also won a 100 Top Hospitals: Performance Improvement Leaders award, while only 3 percent of their non-Baldrige peers won the award."

"The results of the Thomson Reuters study confirm what we've known for years: using the Baldrige Criteria and the earnest pursuit of the Baldrige evaluation will improve your organization by nearly every measure of success, be it in outcomes, safety, customer and employee satisfaction, or profitability," says Baldrige Performance Excellence Program Director Harry Hertz.

The study, Comparison of Baldrige Award Applicants and Recipients with Peer Hospitals on a National Balanced Scorecard, is available at www.nist.gov/baldrige/upload/baldrige-hospital-research-paper.pdf.

Indiana's State Level Baldrige Program

Until last week, Indiana was one of the few remaining states without a Baldrige based award program. However, through the efforts of various interested groups and individuals throughout the state, and in collaboration with the Ohio Partnership for Excellence (OPE), Ohio's Baldrige based program, Indiana is no longer without.

Reflective of the strategy of the National Baldrige program to develop strong regional programs rather than each state having an independent program, Ohio recently announced its expansion into Indiana and West Virginia.

Although the details of the Indiana program is still being worked out, several Indiana individuals and organizations have already been involved with the OPE in previous years. In fact, Schneck Medical Center (Seymour, IN) will be presenting at OPE's "2011 Quest for Success" Conference coming up in September.

Link to Ohio Partnership for Excellence: http://www.partnershipohio.org/
Link to details of expansion into Indiana: http://www.partnershipohio.org/html/apply/apply_program_IN_&_WV.htm

The full text of the OPE press release follows:

Press Release

July 26, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                             

Ohio Partnership for Excellence to Expand Programs to Indiana & West Virginia

COLUMBUS, OH – The Ohio Partnership for Excellence (OPE) is now approved to offer its Baldrige-based programs to organizations in Indiana and West Virginia.  The Alliance for Performance Excellence approved the expansion after a nation-wide competitive process that included proposals from a number of states.  The Alliance is a non-profit network of national, state and local Baldrige-based award programs, associated with the American Society for Quality and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards & Technology that administers the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.  

OPE is Ohio's Baldrige-based award program that administers and presents the Ohio Awards for Excellence, including the Governor's Award for Excellence.  OPE partners with organizations using the internationally-recognized Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.  OPE’s primary product is a comprehensive organizational assessment that helps leaders better understand and prioritize key strengths and opportunities for improvement.  While the assessment lays the foundation, OPE’s main focus is on organizational learning, resource optimization and continuous improvement. 

Under the visionary leadership of OPE's Board Chairman Frank Pérez, former President & CEO of the Kettering Health Network in Dayton and Paul Worstell, former President of PRO-TEC Coating Company in Leipsic, OPE has worked tirelessly to develop a strategy which will give Indiana and West Virginia organizations the same great opportunities OPE has afforded Ohioans for more than a decade.  With this decision, OPE will grow into a regionalized program throughout all three states. 

The mission of OPE is to cultivate performance excellence and continuous improvement among business, education, government, healthcare and non-profit organizations.  By providing a framework for performance excellence through the Baldrige Criteria, organizations have a greater focus on customers, process management, work systems and organization-wide results.  These organizations typically see lower costs, improved productivity and rises in both employee and customer satisfaction. 

This year's OPE Award recipients will be honored at the annual Quest for Success Conference - “Harvesting Excellence” to be held on September 19-20 at Cherry Valley Lodge, Newark, Ohio.  The two-day conference will feature four of the seven 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipients and will provide numerous opportunities to learn about role-model performance management practices, share great ideas with colleagues, and benchmark world-class results. 

For additional information please visit the OPE website at www.partnershipohio.org or contact Al Faber, President/CEO, Ohio Partnership for Excellence, 829 Bethel Road, #212, Columbus, OH 43214 or phone (614) 425-7157.

Achieving an Exceptional Patient and Family Experience of Inpatient Hospital Care

Last week the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) released a white paper describing current frameworks of providing patient centric care. Within the document is also an assessment of primary and secondary drivers as well as descriptions of practices at exemplar organizations.

This IHI white paper can be download here.

The following are excerpts from IHI's document description:

In response to growing interest from the hospital community in better understanding and improving the experience of patients and their families during hospitalization, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) conducted an in-depth review of the research, studied exemplar organizations, and interviewed experts in the field. Our aim was to identify the primary and secondary drivers of exceptional patient and family inpatient hospital experience (defined as care that is patient centered, safe, effective, timely, efficient, and equitable), as measured by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey’s “willingness to recommend” the hospital.


The project identified five primary drivers of exceptional patient and family inpatient hospital experience of care: leadership; staff hearts and minds; respectful partnership; reliable care; and evidence-based care.

Be a Baldrige Examiner in 2011

Baldrige Examiners contribute to the process of determining each year's Baldrige Award recipients. Last year, 1/3 of all examiners were from the healthcare industry.

Why is the Baldrige Criteria for performance excellence so important to healthcare? Rulon Stacy, the CEO for Pouder Valley Health Systems says that "...as soon as you become a Baldrige organization, it will cost you less to run your business, and your outcomes will be better."

Organizations will a Baldrige Examiner on staff will have a unique resource that will give them insight on how to best align themselves to the Baldrige criteria to improve their performance.

Applications for next year's Baldrige Board of Examiners are being accepted until January 13, 2011.

You can learn more about the Baldrige Criteria here: http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/
You can learn more about the examiner application process here: http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/examiners/index.cfm

Rounding to Influence

A former boss of mine introduced me to the concept of "Management by Walking Around". I've seen many leaders fully endorse using this concept with highly variable results. Maybe there's something more than just being visible?

The Sept/Oct 2010 edition of Healthcare Executive published an article from Dr. James Reinertsen about rounding to influence staff behavior and adoption of best practices. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has made available the reprint here.

The following is an excerpt of the article:

Rounding to Influence
Rounding to influence is one element of an evidence-based bundle of leadership methods used in highly reliable organizations. Rounding to influence is not quite the same thing as leadership safety walkrounds, in which leaders go to hospital units and visit with staff to send a signal that they care about the hospital’s improvement agenda, want to gain better awareness of safety issues and want to build relationships with frontline staff. While these are all desirable outcomes, they don’t drive the successful execution of specific safety or infection control practices. Rounding to influence is much more focused. It’s not just about leaders being seen—it’s about what leaders are seen doing and asking.

Reducing Avoidable Hospital Readmissions

On June 4, 2010, at the Florida Hospital Association Meeting, the Health Research & Educational Trust provided this presentation, "Reducing Avoidable Hospital Readmissions," to give recent evidence of the extent and causes of avoidable hospital readmissions, describe congressional action in Patient Protection and Coverage Act, and describe support now available to help hospitals respond to heightened concern and financial pressures.

The presentation can be downloaded here: http://www.ahrq.gov/news/kt/red/readmissionslides/readmission.ppt

Within the presentation, the HRET's Health Care Leader Action Guide to Reduce Avoidable Readmissions is referenced. It can be downloaded here: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Fund%20Report/2010/Jan/Readmission%20Guide/Health%20Care%20Leader%20Readmission%20Guide_Final.pdf

With readmission rates already being publicly reported and penalties scheduled to be imposed on hospitals with "excessive" readmission rates starting Oct 2013, now is a great time to optimize the care transition process.

Healthcare Leading the Way in 2010 Baldrige Award Applications

Last month the NIST announced that of 83 Baldrige applicants for 2010, 54 were for the healthcare category.

Excerpts from the press release follows.
(Note: No Indiana based organization has ever won the Baldrige Award.)

Eighty-three organizations are in the running for the 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest recognition for organizational performance excellence through innovation and improvement. Applicants include three manufacturers, two service companies, seven small businesses, 10 educational organizations, 54 health care organizations and seven nonprofits/governmental organizations. The number of applicants is up 20 percent over 2009 and marks the fifth consecutive year that there have been 70 or more organizations seeking the award. Additionally, the 54 health care applicants are the largest number in that category since it began in 1999.

The 2010 applicants will be evaluated rigorously by an independent board of examiners in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management; and results. Examiners provide each applicant with 300 to 1,000 hours of review and a detailed report on the organization’s strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Thousands of organizations use the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to guide their enterprises, improve performance and get sustainable results. This proven improvement and innovation framework offers organizations an integrated approach to key management areas.

“I see the Baldrige process as a powerful set of mechanisms for disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought and taking disciplined action to create great organizations that produce exceptional results,” says Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don’t.

To learn more about starting or advancing your organization’s quality journey, go to www.nist.gov/baldrige/publications/criteria.cfm and www.nist.gov/baldrige/enter/self.cfm.

Leadership in Healthcare Organizations

Yesterday the Joint Commission posted this monograph from the Governance Institute regarding healthcare organization leadership. You can download the 44 page white paper here.

The paper is divided into the following chapters:
Part 1 - Introduction and Background
Chapter 1: Leaders and Systems
Chapter 2: What Leaders Do

Part 2 - Joint Commission Leadership Standards
Chapter 3: Leadership Structure
Chapter 4. Leadership Relationships
Chapter 5. Hospital Culture and System Performance
Chapter 6. Leadership Operations