The Alliance has adopted use of the Baldrige National Quality Program Criteria for Performance Excellence to guide its approach to strategic Performance Excellence, following effective use of this approach by one of its members for the past three years. In existence for over 20 years, the Baldrige Criteria are the national gold standard for performance management. It is the most comprehensive, time-tested approach used to balance and improve performance management in organizations across the United States.
Performance Excellence is an organization-wide focus on measuring and managing performance based on measurable outcomes within all domains of the organization including: patient access, health outcomes, patient and client focus, employee focus, and financial. Periodic dashboards, also known as balanced scorecards, track performance metrics across all domains and are used to effectively manage outcomes and achieve goals consistent with organization strategy. Performance Excellence also empowers an organization to identify strategic performance gaps with industry benchmarks, elevate and sustain performance improvements and achieve a competitive position as an industry leader.
Performance Excellence principles originated in the automobile industry over 30 years ago in order to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. These principles quickly spread to other industries, such as manufacturing and the service sector. Though a late adopter, the health care sector has fully embraced performance improvement principles driven largely by consumer, regulatory and payor demand. Organizations who have adopted these principles have rapidly improved performance to industry competitive levels.
Alliance Performance Excellence Dashboards
- Health Outcomes Metrics (coming soon)
The Alliance is supporting training and education of staff of the member health centers. Initial focus has been on information technology. The Alliance supports enrollment of staff in computer learning courses at a local training institution and on site. The network is also developing an elearning program; the first online course has been developed, and plans are underway for the next course. Staff will also have access to a variety of proprietary elearning programs. All staff training activities are tracked in a centralized data base. Future efforts will focus on uniform competency assessment tools.
In addition to core areas, the Alliance continues to provide a mechanism for formal and informal sharing and peer support among staff, and to provide a structure for other collaborative efforts. Examples of other Alliance projects include HIPAA preparation, and participation in planning the Med Access project, a pharmacy access project initiated by Community Health.
