Content area
Full text
SSM Health Care's journey to quality excellence began with an "awakening" of the need for improvement in 1989. It culminated late last year when it became the first recipient of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the health care category.
There were twists and turns along the way, but one inspired step finally pointed SSMHC in the right direction. If, as President and CEO Sister Mary Jean Ryan says,"winning the Baldrige is a milestone on a journey that by no means ever ends," SSMHC's experience holds valuable lessons for other health care organizations striving to build comprehensive, effective and dynamic quality initiatives.
After several years of using the Continuous Quality Improvement model, St. Louis-based SSMHC began a systemwide process to apply for the Baldrige Award as a "fast track" to excellence within the organization. Hospitals applied for state quality awards while the system prepared to make its first application to the national award in 1999.
The Baldrige process immediately exposed gaps in the system's quality efforts. The biggest gap: the absence of a single mission statement for the whole organization, which now includes 21 acute care hospitals and three nursing homes in four Midwestern states. "Each facility had a mission statement and they were all over the place," Sister Ryan says. "Plus, the system had its own mission statement that was 85 words long-and I emphasize long."
So SSMHC underwent a 12-month process involving nearly 3,000 employees at all levels. The resulting statement is direct and powerful: "Through our exceptional health care services, we reveal the healing presence of God."
"Now we have a simple 13-word statement, and everybody's job in the organization is aligned around it," Sister Ryan says. But it wasn't that simple. In their initial feedback, Baldrige examiners "loved the mission statement," she recalls wryly, "but they had a big zinger":
ELEVEN CORE VALUES AND CONCEPTS
1. VISIONARY LEADERSHIP: An organization's senior leaders should set directions and create patient focus, clear and visible values, and high expectations.
2. PATIENT-FOCUSED CARE: Quality and performance are key components in determining patient satisfaction.
3. ORGANIZATIONAL AND PERSONAL LEARNING: Includes both continuous improvement of existing approaches and adaptation of change, leading to new goals and/or approaches.
4. VALUING STAFF AND PATIENTS: Major challenges...