Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013 - 62

Careers

Leadership
Development the
Baldrige Way
Michael O. Ugwueke,
DHA, FACHE

Implementing healthcare criteria creates
common understanding, aligns strategies.

I became interested in the Malcolm
Baldrige national Quality Award
following President Clinton’s
approval in 1998 to allow healthcare organizations to compete for
the award. The American Hospital
Association immediately began to
encourage its member hospitals and
health systems to start self-assessing
their organizations against the
Malcolm Baldrige healthcare criteria. Prior to that, Baldrige criteria
for performance excellence were
primarily used by three types of
U.S. organizations—manufacturing, service and small business—to
assess and then improve their performance using the critical factors
that drive an organization’s overall
success. The number of sectors eligible to apply for the award has
since grown to six with the additions of healthcare, education and
nonprofits.
As a strategic planning executive, I
became intrigued by how my organization, at that time, could incorporate these proven criteria in our
strategic plan. I felt the criteria
would align with our strategic
direction and, more importantly,
would make it easy for all our leaders to focus on those few critical
elements of our strategic plan that
would best drive results. During

Healthcare Executive
nOv/DEC 2013

those years, as much as I was
impressed with the Baldrige process, I remained slightly skeptical
about how healthcare organizations
could implement the criteria effectively, particularly coming out of
the Total Quality Management
movement of the late ’80s.

The training to become
an examiner confirmed for
me that the rigor of
addressing critical data
requirements, as well as the
required focus and
discipline, could serve as
an effective blueprint for
excellence when
implementing the criteria.
My skepticism forced me to apply
to become a state examiner for the
Florida Steering Quality Award, the
state equivalent of the national
Baldrige award. The training to
become an examiner confirmed for
me that the rigor of addressing critical data requirements, as well as
the required focus and discipline,
could serve as an effective blueprint

for excellence when implementing
the criteria.
Ever since that training, I have
been a big supporter of incorporating the criteria in organizations’
strategic plans, as well as aligning
the entire organization around the
criteria. The model is valuable even
if the organization has no desire to
ultimately apply for the award.
So, why should organizations
develop their leaders to use the
Baldrige criteria to improve operations? Most department leaders in
healthcare organizations, particularly clinicians, do not have formal
training in business, and many have
limited exposure to the business
principles required to effectively
manage their departments. We use
the process to create common
understanding of contemporary
business tools to ensure that our
department directors maintain a
disciplined, uniform approach in
the deployment of their strategies.
Before the implementation, we had
variable performance levels among
our directors. To ensure success, I
wanted to accomplish three things:
First, I wanted to create a culture of
accountability, where senior leaders
were responsible for setting clear
priorities with timelines and metrics for success. Each of these priorities needed to be supported by
actionable plans for all
This column is made possible in part
by CareFusion.

Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013

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