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.

Schneck Medical Center (Seymour, IN) Named 2011 Baldrige Award Recipient

Schneck Medical Center of Seymour, Indiana, was named a 2011 Baldrige Award Recipient in the Healthcare Category. Schneck is the first organization from Indiana to receive the Baldrige Award.

Until recently, Indiana did not have a State level Baldrige-based award program. Schneck thus partnered with the Ohio Partnership for Excellence. The Ohio program has since expanded its scope and now covers the State of Indiana (as well as West Virginia). The program has now been renamed The Partnership for Excellence.

The press release announcing the other Baldrige Award winners can be found here.

The profile of Schneck Medical Center released with the announcement can be found here.

Below are excerpts from the profile of Schneck Medical Center outlining its quality performance that may be interesting to the healthcare quality professional. Note that the 50 page Baldrige application from Schneck will become public domain in a few months and thus awailable for public examination and learning. Schneck (as required by all Baldrige award winners) will also be participating in national and regional conferences where they will be sharing thier Baldrige journey.

• SMC consistently demonstrates high levels of performance in relation to patient-focused health care measures. Specifically, on 17 of 22 core measures reported for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), SMC scored 100 percent in the second quarter of 2011.
• SMC ranked second among 94 hospitals in its geographic region and outperformed all local competitors when measured for its value-based purchasing (VBP). VBP is a method that holds health care providers accountable for the quality and cost of their services through a system of rewards and consequences. Incentives discourage inappropriate, unnecessary, and costly care.
• Patient satisfaction surveys reflect SMC’s year-to-year favorable performance, meeting or exceeding top 10 percent or top 25 percent levels on nine of 10 Press Ganey (a national consulting firm focused on improving health care performance) measures, including inpatient quality of care, inpatient family support, inpatient coordination of care, and inpatient customer service. On measures of ambulatory care, including timeliness, customer service, and ambulatory education, SMC’s performance exceeds the top 25 percent level.
• SMC’s commitment to a “Patient First” culture has led to many innovative health care options. For example, to address its limited treatment options for myocardial infarctions, SMC and its largest competitor, located 25 miles away, created a collaborative initiative for coordinated handoffs of patients needing emergency cardiac catheterizations. Through this effort, “door-to-balloon” times (the critical period for assessing and diagnosing a heart attack and delivering the needed intervention) have been reduced from 120 to as low as 60 minutes, ensuring patients get the best and quickest treatment.
• SMC has achieved high performance levels in all areas measured by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, with SMC outperforming its Indiana peers from 2008 to 2011 (year-to-date) in the areas related to the ability of nurses and physicians to listen, understand, and provide clear discharge instructions.
• SMC demonstrates role-model performance through its low overall rates of hospital-acquired infections, which have been maintained at or below 1 percent since 2008. There have been no occurrences of postoperative infections from bariatric surgeries, one of SMC’s focus areas. No patient has acquired ventilator-associated pneumonia since 2009, while central line-associated bloodstream infections have remained at low numbers since 2008, with zero cases in 2011 (year-to-date).
• SMC demonstrates excellence in measures of its operating margin, cash flow, and cash position, with its reported results comparing favorably to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) “A-” and “AA” rated median levels. From 2008 to 2010, SMC’s gross revenue results showed growth in the organization’s strategic focus areas—women’s health, joint replacement, noninvasive cardiac care, cancer care, and bariatric surgery.

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.

ACOs are here! ...but will it be everywhere?

Details of the long awaited CMS ACO proposed rules were released on March 31, 2011 and posted in the April 7, 2011 edition of the Federal Register.

The Federal Register entry can be found here.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also simultaneously posted fact sheets and other resources about the proposed ACOs rules:

• Summary of Proposed Rules.
• Summary of the 65 ACO Performance Measures
• Other Federal Agencies Addressing the Legal Issues of ACO Participation
• The Press Release Announcing the ACO Rules
• CMS Fact Sheet about what Providers Need to Know of ACOs

No doubt there will be significant commentary provided by healthcare organizations throughout the country over the next few months. The comment period closes on June 6, 2011. ACO final rules go into effect January 1, 2012.

FAQ on ACOs

Discussions of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are sure to dominate the minds of hospital and health plan administrators in the next few months/years. The establishment of these entities will likely impact the work and expectations of health care quality professionals. Kaiser Health News recently posted an ACO FAQ list. You can find it here.

This FAQ provides thoughts to the following questions:

• What is an accountable care organization?
• When will ACOs begin operating?
• Why did Congress include ACOs in the law?
• How would ACOs be paid?
• How will an ACO be different for patients?
• Who's in charge — hospitals, doctors or insurers?
• If I don't like HMOs, why should I consider an ACO?
• What can go wrong?
• Are there any possible legal concerns?

National Health Care Quality Strategy and Plan

The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services recently put out a call for public input on a national strategy for healthcare quality. You can see the document here.

The proposed framework of the national strategy centers around three principles: 1) Better Care; 2) Affordable Care; 3) Healthy People/Healthy Communities.

The specific questions that the HHS Secretary is asking the public are:

Question 1: Are the proposed Principles for the National Strategy appropriate? What is missing or how could the principles be better guides for the Framework, Priorities and Goals?

Question 2: Is the proposed Framework for the National Strategy sound and easily understood? Does the Framework set the right initial direction for the National Health Care Quality Strategy and Plan? How can it be improved?

Question 3: Using the legislative criteria for establishing national priorities, what national priorities do you think should be addressed in the initial National Health Care Quality Strategy and Plan in each of the following areas. Better Care: Person-centered care that works for patients and providers. Better care should expressly address the quality, safety, access, and reliability of how care is delivered and how patients rate their experience in receiving such care; Affordable Care: Care that reins in unsustainable costs for families, government, and the private sector to make it more affordable; and Healthy People/Healthy Communities: The promotion of health and wellness at all levels.

Question 4: What aspirational goals should be set for the next 5 years, and to what extent should achievable goals be identified for a shorter timeframe?

Question 5: Are there existing, well-established, and widely used measures that can be used or adapted to assess progress towards these goals? What measures would best guide public and private sector action, as well as support assessing the nation’s progress to meeting the goals in the National Quality Strategy?

Question 6: The success of the National Health Care Quality Strategy and Plan is, in large part, dependent on the ability of diverse stakeholders across both the public and private sectors to work together. Do you have recommendations on how key entities, sectors, or stakeholders can best be engaged to drive progress based on the National Health Care Quality Strategy and Plan?

Question 7: Given the role that States can play in organizing health care delivery for vulnerable populations, do the Principles and Framework address the needs and issues of these populations?

Question 8: Are there priorities and goals that should be considered to specifically address State needs?

Question 9: What measures or measure sets should be considered to reflect States’ activities, priorities, and concerns?

Question 10: What are some key recommendations on how to engage with States and ensure continued alignment with the National Quality Strategy?

The deadline for public submission is October 15, 2010 at 5pm. The HHS has created a convenient website for feedback submission at: http://www.hhs.gov/news/reports/quality/nhcqsap.html