Improving Ourselves for the Sake of Others: Our Baldrige Journey

In today's healthcare environment, healthcare organizations are trying to balance one foot in each oftwo boats: one for traditional fee-for-service reimbursement and one for population health and pay-for-quality reimbursement. The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program and its associated Criteria will help healthcare leaders navigate this changing environment and improve healthcare outcomes for patients while improving financial performance, enhancing the patient experience, and creating a positive work environment. This balanced approach, grounded in behaviors identified in high-performing organizations, provides leaders and their teams with the key to realizing strategic goals and long-term sustainability. The Baldrige Criteria alone will not improve an organization; rather, it is the unique and disciplined application of the Criteria to each organization that makes the difference. A Baldrige journey is not a sprint, but rather a marathon; it requires a long-term commitment to improvement at all levels of the organization. At Hill Country Memorial (HCM) Hospital in Fredericksburg, Texas, we selected the Baldrige Framework to guide our team as we embarked on a performance excellence climb that would take us from merely average to the national top io percent of performance as evaluated on important organizational metrics. HCM did not achieve overnight success; instead, we achieved year-over-year improvement in finance and growth, patient experience, quality of care, and workforce environment and engagement. The story of our climb is one of perseverance, willingness to learn from our mistakes, pursuit of innovative best practices both inside and outside of healthcare, and a team committed to providing the highest-quality service to our customers--our patients and our community.