Healthcare leaders test a proven business strategy

Healthcare leaders around the world today face mounting challenges. Every feature of health care—quality, safety, workforce loyalty, patient experience, cost, efficiency and more—faces growing scrutiny.^1,2 While challenges abound, successful change strategies for healthcare leaders and organizations remain elusive.

One proven approach to organizational change—called the Baldrige approach in the United States—is gaining supporters within health care as well as in the business and service sectors. For nearly 15 years, in countries around the globe, organizations committed to high performance have competed against sophisticated comprehensive criteria for performance excellence. The Baldrige approach is not a new fad, another buzz word, or a silver bullet. As Vinod Singhal, Professor of Operations Management at Georgia Institute of Technology, reported to an audience of international quality improvement leaders in The Hague, Netherlands on 3 June 2003, it is a change strategy used by growing numbers of businesses around the globe because it works to improve results.³

In Europe, companies and public sector organizations may apply for the European Quality Award and receive a comprehensive objective evaluation against the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model.⁴ In addition, there are regional and national …