Can the Health Care Criteria Really Save Lives?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey

 

 

When Rulon Stacey, President and Chief Executive Officer of Poudre Valley Health System, a 2008 Baldrige Award recipient, claimed that the Health Care Criteria helped the organization save lives, I believe I heard an audible gasp throughout the auditorium where he was accepting the Award. Or maybe it was just me gasping. 

 

“By having the courage to open themselves to the robust scrutiny of the Baldrige National Quality Program and the fortitude to act on what they learned, [Poudre Valley Health System] has literally transformed the way health care can and should be provided. As a result of [Poudre Valley Health System's] commitment, I’m convinced that there are people who are alive today who otherwise would not be alive.”

 

As a former newspaper reporter, I knew that such a statement could not be made without data to back it up. I needed to further investigate. Here is what I found:

 

• Poudre Valley Health System is a locally owned and private, nonprofit health care organization serving residents of northern Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. In two acute care hospitals and a network of other facilities, Poudre Valley Health System offers a full spectrum of health care services, including emergency/urgent, intensive, medical/surgical, maternal/child, oncology, and orthopedic care.

• The health system reports that its mortality rate for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients has consistently improved and remained better than its primary competitor. Poudre Valley Health System also consistently outperforms the risk-adjusted rate predicted for it by HealthGrades. At the time it received the Award, the health system had seen three years of continued improvements for patients with heart failure and pneumonia.

• In 2007 and 2008, Poudre Valley Health System was recognized as the nation’s number one hospital for sustained nursing excellence by the American Nurses Association and the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI).

• At the time it received the Baldrige Award, for five consecutive years, Poudre Valley Health System had been one of seven U.S. hospitals to be named a Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospital (for superior outcomes, patient safety, and operational and financial performance).

• In addition, patient satisfaction scores surpass the national top 10 percent, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

 

“We’ve got lessons learned that are saving people's lives because we participated in the Baldrige process," Stacey said.

 

Based on these data, Mr. Stacey, I believe that you are correct—utilizing the Health Care Criteria to drive improvement does help save lives.

 

(To learn more about the processes that Poudre Valley uses to save lives and the results it has achieved, see its Award application summary.)

 

Comments

[Denise Haynes]

Dawn - thanks for pointing this out. I have spoken recently to three small business award recipients from previous years, who have without hesitation stated that their Baldrige journey "saved the life" of the business during the recent economic difficulties. But, having a 30+ year nursing history, the real reason I became such a proponent (fanatic?) of Baldrige is because of the impact on saving lives. In health care, we talk a lot about "evidence-based medicine." Use of the criteria certainly aligns with that concept, although the Baldrige term is "systematic approaches." Baldrige goes beyond the clinical aspects, though - encouraging systematic approaches to be used in an "evidence-based business" model as well. This goes even further toward the saving of lives. A comment made by one of my fellow MSN/MBA students over a decade ago has stuck with me - "would you rather have a nurse taking care of you who is truly engaged and focused on caring for you - alert to the nuances in changes in your condition and what those changes may mean, or one who is working today because she needs to pay for her new refrigerator?" No doubt in my mind at all about Baldrige saving lives - thank for pointing out the evidence!

[Frank Appel]

I'm reminded of a comment Joseph Juran made at a heathcare conference about 20 years ago - he said that the real improvement in health care in our lifetime will come not from expanded scientific knowledge or improved training of health care practitioners, but rather from improving the management practices of healthcare organizations. Those of us who have been working in the healthcare quality arena for many years know that Juran was right, and the Baldrige recipients in healthcare since 2002 have proven his point. It is certainly a great message to support use of the Baldrige criteria in healthcare - "Baldrige saves lives!"

[Larry Potterfield]

All of are us are trying to improve the output from our processes, regardless of our sector. Good results are delivered by well-tuned processes that are being well-managed, both of which come right out of the Baldrige Criteria. There are no life and death process at MidwayUSA, but there certainly are in our hospitals.

Perhaps we should write a requirement for Baldrige into the new health care law!

Go Baldrige!

[Bryan Zak]

Yes, Health Care Quality has been improved but what are the results for Health Care Costs? I am sure the Baldrige Journey will have results, but as a Nation the costs of health care is either out of control, or is an economic engine that keeps our Nation's economy functioning. The question is whether these types of economic engines are sustainable over the long term?