Simplify Baldrige For Healthcare

s the popularity of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award continues to grow, the healthcare industry has become increasingly interested in its benefits. The Malcolm Baldrige Model for Performance Excellence has now been widely emulated at local, national and international levels as a result of its success in creating strategic and operational performance improvement over the past 16 years. All these emulative models continue to have the Baldrige criteria as the common theme and use similar methods for conducting organizational assessment. Organizations of all types, from small entrepreneurial organizations to large hospitals to government agencies, can successfully apply the criteria. When done well, self-assessments can be used as a catalyst for change, and when combined with a focused improvement effort can result in impressive performance levels. Companies using selfassessment have had higher levels of annual sales turnover, market share and return on sales than those not using it. The success of three recent Baldrige recipients in healthcare—SSM Health Care of St. Louis in 2002 and Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, MO, and Baptist Hospital of Pensacola, FL, in 2003—further demonstrates the high level of performance attainable even within today’s healthcare constraints. Twenty-two organizations have applied for the Baldrige award in the healthcare category in 2004— the most for any of the five Baldrige categories. However, with the Baldrige criteria still relatively new to healthcare, a set of tools is needed to help organizations easily assess themselves against the criteria and further understand the criteria’s application to healthcare. A