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New Conditions for Baldrige Award Eligibility
The Baldrige program has announced new conditions for applying for the Baldrige Award. In addition to the existing eligibility requirements—i.e., headquartered in the U.S., in existence for at least one year, able to share information, and categorized as a business, educational institution, healthcare organization, or nonprofit—an organization must meet one of the following conditions to apply for the Baldrige Award:
- Be a previous Baldrige Award recipient
- Have received the top-tier award from a member of the Alliance for Performance Excellence within the past 5 years
- Have received a Baldrige site visit within the past five years
- Have received a combined scoring band range of 8 or better in the past five years
- Have 25% or more of its employees outside the organization’s home state
- Have no Alliance member program available for your organization
The new requirements “leverage the larger Baldrige enterprise—in particular, the state and local Baldrige-based award programs,” according to Harry Hertz, Baldrige program director. The new requirements will compel first-time applicants to use their state programs unless one is not available, which is currently true for just one state: Utah. You will find a complete list of state and local award programs here.
The change will likely strengthen the state programs while reducing the number of applicants…
21Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
(11 votes, average: 4.45 out of 5)
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Plan Now to Integrate Baldrige
As a new year approaches, many organizations are finalizing plans to begin or continue their Baldrige journeys. Most will not apply for an award, but rather begin using the Baldrige criteria to evaluate and improve performance. I’m often asked by those new to Baldrige about the best way to integrate Baldrige and what resources are required to make it effective.
From my experience, the introduction to Baldrige often begins with training. Senior leaders need to understand what Baldrige is and how it can help their organizations. They need to know what is involved in a Baldrige assessment so that they can allocate resources, set goals and expectations, and provide ongoing support. And they need to establish processes for reviewing the results of the assessment, prioritizing opportunities for improvement, and developing action plans.
The only way to effectively integrate the Baldrige model is through Baldrige assessments, which means completely and accurately answering the Baldrige criteria questions and evaluating those responses to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. If you plan to conduct this assessment internally, you will need to train the people who will conduct the assessment in how to interpret the criteria, where to find the answers to the questions, and how…
19Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued (13 votes, average: 4.31 out of 5) Loading ...
Culture’s Impact on the Bottom Line
In his book, The Culture Cycle, James L. Heskett wrote that effective culture can account for 20-30% of the differential in performance when compared to “culturally unremarkable” competitors.
Culture has a significant impact on the bottom line.
Burson-Marsteller and the Great Place to Work Institute asked senior executives from 20 of the top 25 “best multinational companies” for 2011 about the value of a positive work environment. Deidre Campbell highlighted the findings in this article on the HBR Blog Network:
- They invest more in their employees: 30% are investing more in work-life programs such as flex-time and health benefit while the other 70% are holding steady. None is cutting back.
- They provide stability: 75% of respondents valued most those programs that communicate brand mission and provide career development opportunities, compared to 15% who valued traditional benefits like health insurance and family leave and 5% who valued onsite benefits such as cafeterias and childcare.
- They value culture: “When asked which elements of workplace commitment most benefit daily operations, companies ranked culture at 80% and recruitment/retention at 70%,” writes Campbell. Competitiveness, customer loyalty, innovation, and productivity each garnered less than 20%.
- They share their story: 70% of respondents said customers are the most important external audience for understanding the company’s commitment to…
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Baldrige Program Update
Our misguided Congress decided not to fund the Baldrige program in 2012. However, the Baldrige program will continue through the support of the Baldrige Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization that has pledged up to $5.2 million for the 2012 cycle. While that does not match the federal funding that was lost, it will keep the program going.
According to an email from Debbie Collard, chair of the Foundation, it “is committed to provide funding for FY2013 and beyond, commensurate with a budget-neutral private sector-funded business and financial model which is under development by a team of members from the Baldrige Enterprise.”
To reassure those organizations and leaders who are considering Baldrige or taking the first steps toward integrating it, the Baldrige program is not likely to end because it lost federal funding. The Foundation will provide essential support during the transition that must occur for the program to survive and thrive. In a Blogrige post, Baldrige program director Harry Hertz outlined the steps being taken to ensure the program’s sustainability:
12Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued“We are actively working with our Enterprise partners (the Baldrige Foundation, the Alliance for Performance Excellence, and ASQ) to develop an Enterprise business and financial model that looks at Baldrige processes on an enterprise-wide…
(12 votes, average: 4.42 out of 5) Loading ...
Publisher Wins Baldrige Award
I grew up in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod: baptized and confirmed, eight years in parochial school, Sunday School and church every Sunday, graduated from Concordia College in St. Paul and taught for four years in a Missouri Synod elementary school. Concordia is a popular Missouri Synod name: The Concordia University System includes ten colleges and universities, many of the synod’s churches use the Concordia name, and the publishing arm of the synod is the Concordia Publishing House (CPH), which is the only non-healthcare recipient of the 2011 Baldrige Award.
It’s a well-deserved honor. CPH has 247 employees and revenues of $35 million and provides more than 8,000 products to members of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It excels at customer service, starting with 98% customer satisfaction scores, exceeding the benchmark for U.S. call centers. It’s Customer Call Center has been considered a “Center of Excellence” by Purdue University each of the last three years.
Innovation helps CPH build customer relationships. Its Center for Client Retention collects and analyzes data from customers of competitors, categorizing sales and customer trends in more than 50 different ways to correlate product sales and types of customers. Its Emerging Products team studies how to use new technologies to…
8Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued (11 votes, average: 4.27 out of 5) Loading ...
A Patient First Culture
It’s likely that every medical center claims to put patients first. Those that actually put patients first can back up their claims with tangible results.
Schneck Medical Center, a 2011 Baldrige Award winner, is a 93-bed nonprofit hospital in southern Indiana. “At the forefront of Schneck’s commitment to excellence,” it states on its website, “is the Patient First Culture.” That culture has enabled Schneck to score 100% on 17 of 22 core measures reported for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Its patient satisfaction scores meet or exceed the top 10% or top 25% levels on nine of ten Press Ganey measures. Its hospital-acquired infection rate has been at or below 1% since 2008. It ranks second among 94 hospitals in its geographic region in value-based purchasing, which holds healthcare providers accountable for the quality and cost of their services.
An organization’s culture shapes its decisions. Schneck had limited treatment options for patients suffering myocardial infarctions, taking 120 minutes from the time a heart attack was diagnosed to the first intervention. To put these patients first, it collaborated with its largest competitor, located 25 miles away, to coordinate handing off patients who needed emergency cardiac catheterizations. The initiative has reduced…
5Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued (12 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5) Loading ...
A Unique Healthcare Delivery System
For the 55,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people it serves, Southcentral Foundation (SCF) has cut costly emergency room and urgent care visits by 50% and reduced specialty care by 65%, primary care visits by 36%, and hospital admissions by 53%. Such impressive results helped SCF win the 2011 Baldrige Award.
Of those SCF serves, 45,000 live in the Anchorage, Alaska, area and 10,000 live in 55 remote villages accessible only by plane. SCF serves them through a unique health care delivery system, the Nuka System of Care, that focuses strategies and processes on wellness. The system is owned, managed, directed, designed, and driven by Alaska Native people, which SCF calls “customer-owners.”
These unique ownership and health care delivery systems are producing impressive results:
- Customer-owners can see their primary care providers on the same day if they call by 4 p.m. and arrive by 4:30. Seventy to 80% of appointment slots are open at the start of each day.
- Alaska Natives and American Indian people experience diabetes at twice the national rate. Since 2009, SCF’s performance levels for diabetes care have exceeded the 90th percentile of the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information set.
- SFC manages key performance data through DataMall where it is collected, aggregated, trended,…
(16 votes, average: 4.31 out of 5) Loading ...
