Quality improvement

Baldrige is a system for managing performance, a blueprint for building a high performance healthcare system, and a process for determining which parts add value. Should you consider the Baldrige model for your organization? Where do you start?

Application of the Baldrige model will improve your organization. One focus area is your mission. This is more than hanging it on the wall. Stop an employee and ask about the values and mission of the company and the facility. What answer do you get? Do you set goals that integrate departments? This is more than a once-a-year session to create a document.

Are your benefits, policies, schedules tailored to the needs of your workforce? Is your facility a fun place to work? Are your supervisors trained and evaluated on good supervision skills? Has your turnover declined based on actions you have taken?

How do you listen and learn to determine key customer requirements? Do you have metrics to compare your scores with others and with benchmarks? What is your competitive position? How do you know? What are the principal factors that determine success in your market?

A performance improvement process is a critical component of the Baldrige model. Do you have operational or clinical areas where you have achieved measurable improvement as a result of an intervention?

The AHCA and most states recognize organizations for quality. Should you pursue a quality award? Only you can answer that question. It will move you in the direction of a structured and disciplined approach to quality improvement. It will be a learning process. It will focus management and staff around a goal oriented tasks. And if successful, it will result in recognition. If you are recognized, how do you leverage this recognition in your marketing and communications programs?

If you decide to apply for a quality award, do you know how to put into words your responses that will pass the review of a rater? If not, you will not be recognized. This is not a marketing piece you are writing. What are the two questions that 90% of the applications that are rejected fail to answer correctly?

If you don't have the answers, we do!  Contact Ron Retzke at Retzke & Associates, Inc.