According to Rulon Stacey, president and CEO of Poudre Valley Health System, there are people alive today because of what PVHS has done with Baldrige. PHVS, which won the Baldrige Award in 2008, will receive the Award from President Obama in a ceremony on December 2.

Located in northern Colorado, PVHS has 4,300 employees, 600 physicians, and 900 volunteers. It started integrating Baldrige in 1999. “It was a big time of change for Poudre Valley Health System,” said Pam Brock, vice president of marketing. “We’d gone through five CEOs in four years and we had a 25% turnover rate. The organization was struggling and this was when Rulon first became CEO. He knew we needed something to take the organization to a different place.” (“PVHS goes to Washington—finally,” Steve Porter, Northern Colorado Business Report, November 20, 2009)

Its results point to a very different place. Modern Healthcare magazine named it one of “America’s 100 Best Places to Work in Healthcare” in 2008. Poudre Valley Hospital was recognized as the nation’s number one hospital for sustained nursing excellence in 2007 and 2008. For five consecutive years, Poudre Valley Hospital has been one of seven U.S. hospitals named a Thomson 100 Top Hospital for superior outcomes, patient safety, and operational and financial performance. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, its patient satisfaction scores surpass the national top 10%. And its staff voluntary turnover rate is down to 8%, well below that of its competitors.

“The thing we learned was that the Baldrige Award is really about the improvement the organization makes over time,” said Brock. “And when staff and our physicians began to see that, we actually got world-class results.”

World-class results for a health system mean more lives are saved through superior outcomes and more patients have a positive experience because of world-class patient safety and operational and financial performance. In 2006, the average PVHS charge was $2,000 lower than that of its main competitor and $7,000 lower than the Denver metropolitan rate—an indicator of system performance that resonates when healthcare affordability is a major issue.

To learn more about Baldrige in healthcare and how to integrate the Baldrige model, read:

• What Is Baldrige?
• Why Baldrige? Saint Luke’s Makes the Case
• 3 Ingredients to Improving Healthcare
• Measuring Quality in Healthcare
• Is Baldrige Right for Your Organization?
• Baldrige Is the Enemy of Good
• The Baldrige Criteria
• 10 Steps to an Effective Baldrige Assessment

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