All Posts Tagged With: "Healthcare"
Benefit-to-Cost Ratio for Baldrige: 820-to-1
A new study of the net social value of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program concludes that the program “creates great value for the U.S. economy.”
Economists Albert N. Link from the University of North Carolina and John T. Scott from Dartmouth College published their evaluation of 45 Baldrige Award applicants on December 16, 2011. The report is available here (pdf). The Baldrige program asked the 274 organizations that submitted applications from 2007 to 2010 to participate in the study and 45 accepted the invitation. Link and Scott used a counterfactual evaluation method to determine the benefit-to-cost ratio, asking what the private sector would have had to invest to achieve the same level of benefits through the Baldrige program. Benefits were realized in three areas:
- Savings to the applicants in investment costs to achieve the same level of benefits from their performance excellence strategies as they realized from the Baldrige program
- Gains by consumers in greater satisfaction from higher quality products and services
- Gains to the economy from saving scarce resources because the Baldrige Criteria were available
As I understand it, the counterfactual evaluation case made by the study is that organizations that integrate Baldrige increase demand because they offer higher quality products and services and they reduce costs because of more efficient operations. They earn more and spend less.
Link and Scott describe the methodology in their report. They concluded that the ratio of social benefits to social costs among the 45 organizations that responded to the survey was 351:1 while the ratio for all Baldrige Award…
19Jan2012 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedHelp Bootstrap My Baldrige Project
What do world-class hospitals and medical centers do differently? What can the hospitals and medical centers we use learn from them?
To answer these questions, I’ve launched a new project on Kickstarter to research and write a book called The Road to World-Class Healthcare. You can watch a video introducing the project and read a complete description of it here. The key to the book is the research: road trips to 20 to 25 world-class hospitals and medical centers across the country to interview leaders and learn about best practices.
To fund the research, I’ve posted the project on Kickstarter. A Kickstarter project succeeds by gaining backers who pledge financial support in exchange for rewards. Your reward for becoming a backer of The Road to World-Class Healthcare includes exclusive access to audio excerpts of key interviews, photos, and video of best practices. Invest more and the rewards increase. You can find the complete list of rewards here.
One of the reasons for posting this project on Kickstarter, other than to help fund the research, is to see if it can generate interest. If it meets the goal, the book will be written, and that book will appeal to mainstream publishers who expect authors to have a “platform” from which to market and sell their work. Kickstarter will help me build a platform.
Please take a couple minutes to check out the video and project description at Kickstarter here. I hope you will take a personal interest in supporting it. And, since this is a grassroots…
27Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedA 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 the time between diagnosis and intervention to as low as 60 minutes.
A patient first culture does not mean that nothing else matters. Schneck also values workforce satisfaction: It has consistently been named one of Indiana’s Best Places to Work and recognized nationally as a “Best Place to Work” by Modern…
5Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedA 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, segmented, and available to managers, clinicians, customer-owners, and employees.
- SCF’s overall customer satisfaction rating in 2010 was 91%. Its overall satisfaction rating on Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) was 73.3%, significantly higher than the CAHPS TopBox benchmark of 46%.
- Staff turnover decreased from 37% in 2008 to 17% in…
Huge Health System Wins 2011 Baldrige Award
Kudos to the leaders at Henry Ford Health System, one of four Baldrige Award winners in 2011. It is very challenging for an organization to make the necessary systemic changes to produce repeatable world-class results. It is especially challenging when that organization has 140 sites: seven hospitals, 33 multispecialty ambulatory care centers, affiliated physician practices, a research and education component, the Health Alliance Plan (health insurance coverage for more than 467,000 members), and 91 community care operations.
Henry Ford Health System serves a three-county region encompassing Detroit and its suburbs with a workforce just shy of 30,000 employees, physicians, and volunteers. Its revenue in 2010 was $4.08 billion.
It’s hard to imagine the effort it has taken to keep this massive organization moving along the Baldrige path, but its results are a testament to its leaders’ tenacity:
- Rated #1 for member satisfaction among all health insurance plans in Michigan by J.D. Powers and Associates
- Satisfaction exceeding 90th percentile level for HFHS’s medical centers, with 80% likely to recommend
- Performance on CMS core measures at the 90th percentile for 75% of reporting areas across the system’s seven inpatient hospitals
- Evidence-based global harm campaign to improve patient safety recognized as a national best practice by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
- Market leader in the area it serves, increasing inpatient market share by an average of 3% a year since 2004
- Maintained a positive net operating income despite significant increases in uncompensated care—approximately $200 million in 2010
- HFHS’s leaders model and support entrepreneurism throughout the healthcare delivery system
- Best-in-class innovations including the Perfect Depression Program,…
Value of Baldrige Validated — Again
Thomson Reuters released a report this week on a study that demonstrates that “hospitals using the Baldrige process exhibit significantly higher rates of improvement in balanced organizational performance than non-Baldrige hospitals.”
The study confirms what similar studies of business performance have also shown. No matter what their organizations do, leaders need to consider these results and, if their organizations are not integrating Baldrige, ask how they, too, can achieve similar high rates of improvement.
Thomson Reuters uses independent public data to measure hospital performance and identify the national benchmarks for balanced excellence. It publishes the best 3% in an annual list of 100 Top Hospitals. For this study, it measured the association between 38 Baldrige hospitals (Award winners plus site-visit hospitals that gave permission) and 100 Top Hospitals on key indicators of performance and improvement. The analysis showed:
- Substantial agreement between the results of the Baldrige process and the Top 100 Hospitals award: Baldrige hospitals are significantly more likely than their peers to win a 100 Top Hospitals award.
- Baldrige hospitals were significantly more likely than their peers to display faster five-year performance improvement.
- Baldrige hospitals were about 83% more likely than non-Baldrige hospitals to be awarded a 100 Top Hospitals award for excellence.
- Baldrige hospitals outperformed non-Baldrige hospitals on nearly all of the individual measures of performance used in the 100 Top Hospitals composite score including risk-adjusted mortality, risk-adjusted complications index, patient safety index, CMS core measures score, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and adjusted operating profit margin.
You can read the Thomson Reuters report here.
You…
27Oct2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMy Baldrige Experience in Iowa
Two days ago I took my 88-year-old mother to Wright Medical Center in Clarion, Iowa, for a hip replacement. We arrived at 6 a.m. and were greeted warmly by a woman in Admissions. Mom signed a few forms and was whisked away for lab work. I saw her again for a few minutes before they prepared her for surgery. An hour-and-a-half later, her surgery was done. I was talking to her in her room by 10 a.m.
She was expertly pampered for the rest of the day, able to get out of bed for a light dinner in the evening, walking the hallways yesterday, likely to be released today. None of it felt rushed. The attention was timely, focused, and compassionate. As a son, I felt relieved at the quality and efficiency I witnessed and at the high level of care my Mom received.
Wright Medical Center is a quality leader. It has integrated Baldrige by applying for the Iowa Recognition for Performance Excellence award. Two years ago, the quality processes it was implementing were described in Quality Progress, the magazine of the American Society for Quality.
I found all of this out when I was wandering the halls waiting for my Mom to get out of surgery. It relaxed me. I’ve worked with dozens of organizations that were integrating Baldrige and all of them aspire to be the best they can be. Wright Medical Center fit that mold. It is patient and family focused. Supplies—medicine, cold packs, food, etc.—arrived when they were…
6Oct2011 | Steve George | 2 comments | Continued
