BLOGRIGE

Thomson Reuters Finds Baldrige Hospitals Outperform Peers

Posted by Zara Brunner

Thomson Reuters just released a report finding that Baldrige hospitals (those that either received a site visit or the Baldrige Award at the national level) outperformed non-Baldrige hospitals on nearly all of the measures of performance used in the Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals.  It's great to have this outside study to validate what Baldrige applicants, winners, examiners, state programs, and other community members have known for so long: Baldrige really does make a difference in improving health care outcomes, accelerating organizational performance, and in saving lives. 

You can see the full report, but in the meantime let me highlight some of the findings:

• Baldrige hospitals were six times more likely to be counted among the 100 Top Hospitals, which represent the top 3% of hospitals in the United States
• Baldrige hospitals outperform the 100 Top Hospitals on the following Thomson Reuters measures:
  • risk-adjusted mortality index
  • risk-adjusted complications index
  • patient safety index
  • CMS core measures score
  • severity-adjusted average length of stay
  • adjusted operating profit margin
• Baldrige hospitals were significantly more likely than peers to display faster five-year performance improvement

"The results of the Thomson Reuters study confirm what we've known for years: using the Baldrige Criteria and the earnest pursuit of the Baldrige evaluation will improve your organization by nearly every measure of success, be it in outcomes, safety, customer and employee satisfaction, or profitability," says the Baldrige Cheermudgeon, Harry Hertz. 

If you were thinking about getting started with the Baldrige Criteria, are in the early stages of assessing your organization with the Criteria, or applying for the Baldrige Award, this new study should bolster your reasons for doing so.  To all those organizations, health care and otherwise, that just completed their Baldrige site visits: congratulate your staff on their accomplishments.  And to all the Baldrige Examiners who make site visits and the Baldrige process possible: thank you for the difference you make to improving U.S. performance across all sectors!

Contranym...It's Just Another Word!

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

Until last week, I did not know what a contranym was. I also thought that cleave was to separate or split apart, as with a meat cleaver. Imagine my surprise when I read cleave in a sentence where the syntax clearly indicated the opposite, where cleave appeared to mean to stick or cling to. So, I polled a few colleagues and some of them gave the first definition and some the second, but none gave both. Both definitions are correct. The first is a transitive verb and the second intransitive. Furthermore, I learned from Wikipedia that there are other homographs (words with the same spelling) that are also antonyms. As a group these words are known as auto-antonyms or contranyms.

OK, so this is amusing you say, but why is he talking about contranyms on Blogrige, the official blog of the Baldrige Program? Because this example, in a small way, shows the challenges associated with writing the Criteria for Performance Excellence. Every other year as we revise the Criteria, every word and sentence has to be scrutinized to try to avoid misinterpretations of the purpose or meaning of each question in the Criteria. Furthermore, each question is examined from the perspective of whether it can be answered with practical factual information. You would be amazed at how many questions are discarded because they are theoretically great, but not of practical value or not answerable with real business practices. We then ask, can the question be answered equally well by manufacturers, service providers, small business, nonprofit organizations, education, and health care. Will pondering the question help the organization improve or innovate? Could the question have different meanings in different sectors? Does the question reflect the needs of current, forefront management practices?

Writing Baldrige Criteria is challenging; but it is also fun! If you have not been engaged in discussions of Criteria revisions, now that you know some of the questions to ask, do you have any ideas to suggest? You can respond directly on this blog or you can send input through our feedback link. Thanks!

Re-Quest for Excellence . . .

Posted by Jeff Lucas

Well, not exactly, but the Baldrige Regional conferences do showcase our current class of Baldrige winning organizations telling their powerful stories.  We recently wrapped up our conference season with the second regional conference in Birmingham, Alabama.  The Alabama Productivity Center put on a great event and there were opportunities to hear from from all seven of this year's Award winners, seven previous recipients, and DCH Health System, recipient of the Alabama Quality Award.  The description by DCH of the challenges they faced during the April tornado in Tuscaloosa and the way they responded was truly inspiring. 

The first regional was two weeks prior in Kanas City, MO.  Raina Knox and her staff at the Excellence in Missouri Foundation did an equally splendid job of helping us host. In conjunction with this event, there was a whirlwind of Baldrige community activity taking place:  the Baldrige Executive Fellows wrapped up their year-long experience (see Harry Hertz's post here), The Alliance for Performance Excellence(the network of Baldrige-based state and local quality programs) held their annual workshop, and the Baldrige Award Recipients held their annual face-to-face.  Somehow everyone still manged to fit in informative plenary and concurrent sessions by Award Winners and eat their fill of ribs.

Attendees at both conferences were treated to Larry Potterfield's views on why America Needs Baldrige.  Larry, CEO of MidwayUSA (a 2009 Baldrige Winner) made a compelling case as usual. 

If you haven't had a chance to attend one of the Baldrige Regional Conferences, you might want to make a note to yourself to look for the announcements next summer (or you could just sign up for our email alerts and we'd take care of reminding you). They provide an opportunity to hear from Baldrige Award Winners, network with the larger Baldrige community and experience a wide variety of state-based hospitality from our Alliance partners (all without having to travel to DC, although those cherry blossoms sure are pretty in April).  Frequently when we talk to eventual Award winning organizations they mention attendance at a regional conference as the spark that got them started on serious implementation of the Baldrige approach. 

Super-size or Undersize...the Customer Loses!

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

It has been a while since I shared some thoughts from the customer's perspective. It has been building up in me...so you are in for a super-sized treat or undersized disappointment!

Why is there no normal anymore? Why does everything appear to be super-sized or undersized? Burgers, fries, shakes...all those "healthy foods" seem to come super-sized for the special treat. I never see an offer to super-size the fresh fruit option or the container of milk.

But this blog was occasioned by undersizing. We have all read about food packages being undersized and the price remaining the same...cereal boxes, chocolate bars, and, I guess, a quart of ice cream is now less than a quart (I am not the ice cream buyer in our family). The products never contain a package marker indicating the new, smaller size. Hopefully, we will not notice.

This week it hit home in an indelicate area...toilet tissue. Now mind you I never would have known in use, so to speak. But for 26 years we have had bathroom fixtures in all our bath rooms that have a spring loaded clamp for installing the roll of paper (i.e. no bar that the roll goes on.) Imagine my surprise when a new super-sized package of paper kept falling off the holder every time it was used. Yes, they appear to be undersizing some brands of toilet tissue. A trip to the grocery store confirmed it. They have cut about 0.2 inch from the width of the roll. just enough to cause it to come off the holder when tugged. As I mentioned, probably no one with typical paper holders will ever notice, but the packaging didn't say, new and improved smaller size or anything to alert the unsuspecting purchaser! What do you do with 24 rolls (or whatever it is) of this stuff?

And what does this all have to do with the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence? Well, the Criteria revisions reflect current challenges organizations face and one of the big challenges is customer engagement and retention. The Criteria ask,  "How do you identify customer and market requirements for your products? How do you innovate products to meet the requirements and exceed the expectations of your customers?" The Criteria do not ask about earning profits at the expense of your customers' health or earning profits by "fooling" the customer. We have all had the latter experience at some time. What has that done to your brand loyalty?