Twice in the last two weeks I've spent the better part of a day discussing performance excellence systems with area healthcare companies. As someone who is peering toward his own healthcare horizon with the perspective of an aging baby boomer, I have to admit I like the trend I'm seeing these days. We can debate issues of "motive," but the reality is that the quality and performance of healthcare systems in the U.S. is becoming an area of increasing focus by the healthcare companies themselves. Plagued by skyrocketing costs and employee resource problems, even maintaining current healthcare quality levels is no easy task.
When N.I.S.T. and the Department of Commerce added "healthcare" and "education" as separate categories for the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award in 1999, the hope was that it would serve as a catalyst for postiive change in two industries where performance and accountability were both being increasingly called into question by outsiders.
For healthcare, recent Baldrige application data reveals a promising trend. In the 2007 applicant pool, healthcare organizations represent 50% of total U.S. Baldrige applicants (http://www.baldrige.nist.gov/Baldrige_Process_news.htm).
And award recipients, such as St. Louis-based SSM Healthcare (http://ssmhc.com), offer strong evidence that many of the same techniques developed and refined in the manufacturing arena can and are being applied effectively to drive systematic performance improvement in hospitals. In my mind, SSM has a lot of "the big stuff" figured out. They have strong leadership that has partnered with employees to determine who they are, why they exist as an organization, and how they will measure progress toward that mission. This allows, among other things, their employees to better know how to make those thousands of smaller decisions each and every day that collectively move SSM forward. If you're in healthcare management and looking for how to improve your operation, I highly recommend SSM as a role model. My aging fellow baby boomers and I are counting on you.