Being Remarkable from the Boardroom to the Bedside

 “Remarkable” means extraordinary, uncommon, worthy of notice or attention, unusual.

Would you use that word to describe your place of work? How about your hospital? Now imagine how much more confidence you would have in your health care provider if it had proven itself to be extraordinary or remarkable.

Baldrige Award recipient Hill Country Memorial continues to work toward being remarkable every day, with continuous improvements in the care it provides and in all areas of its operations.

At the upcoming 29th Annual Quest for Excellence^® Conference, Dr. James R. Partin, chief medical officer at Hill Country Memorial, will be presenting on the hospital's “journey from good to remarkable" and on how other organizations might learn to make their operations remarkable, too.

In a virtual interview, Partin shared with me Hill Country Memorial's journey.

What makes Hill Country’s journey remarkable?

I think what makes Hill Country’s journey remarkable is the focus on improvement at all levels of the organization; from the boardroom to the bedside, each individual is committed to providing the highest quality of care and service to our patients and community. Another key has been our ability to integrate Baldrige into our day-to-day operations. We don’t “do Baldrige,” but rather we look at our processes and determine how we can revise/improve them to meet the Baldrige Criteria [found within the Baldrige Excellence Framework] and improve performance.

Can you share an example of your success along the journey?

One of our biggest successes along the journey was in the deployment of our strategic plan. We integrated this deployment into our cascade of strategic goals through department goals to support the strategic targets and individual employee quarterly coaching plans; these plans address how each employee implements action plans to help his/her department achieve departmental goals that roll back up to achievement of strategic goals.

Another success is our implementation of the Strategic Breakthrough Improvement (SBI) Process. This process includes 90-day, interdisciplinary, organizational-level improvement teams that work on strategic action plans. Through the SBI and cascading goal processes, we have improved achievement of strategic targets from approximately 50% annually to 85% annually.

What are your top tips for using Baldrige resources to support such a journey?

• Don’t make Baldrige another thing you are doing. Rather, look at your processes and determine how you can improve them to address the Baldrige Criteria.
• Share results with all stakeholders. Let people know how the work they are doing is helping the organization achieve its goals.
• Involve physicians in improving key processes within the organization.

What else might participants learn at your conference session?

The most striking example of how Hill Country Memorial has continued to use the Baldrige Excellence Framework is in the Strategic Development Deployment Process. We continue to use the process and timeline to define our strategy annually for managing our strengths and improving our weaknesses to meet the changing health care environment, increasing competition, and the ever-changing payment models.

What are a few key reasons that organizations in your sector can benefit from using the Baldrige Excellence Framework?

The Baldrige framework

• provides an organizational approach to improvement that is balanced;
• helps an organization focus on key results and the processes that support those results, really honing in on important improvement opportunities; and
• uncovers gaps/opportunities that staff may not know existed in the organization.

To learn how you and your organization can benefit from these insights and learn more, register now for the 29th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference, which will feature the 2016 Baldrige Award recipients and many more national role models sharing their best practices.