As I reflect upon Sharp HealthCare’s journey to transform the health care experience, a key milestone in this quest was the selection of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria as our quality guidepost. Sharp leaders wanted to continue to stretch the organization within the transformation structure already established called The Sharp Experience. The Baldrige program offered the means to set our goals even higher with lofty targets that would raise our performance every year.

The Baldrige standard provided us with accountability and external feedback to improve Sharp HealthCare’s processes and results. In fact, if The Sharp Experience is what we do and why we do it, then Baldrige helped with how we get there. It established process improvements through welcome feedback and specific measurements. It asked leaders to think differently about what we do and front-line staff to take ownership of the importance of what they do every day to make our organization better. Baldrige principles offered rigor and structure that allow a good organization to learn how to become an excellent one.

Becoming students of Baldrige was another key milestone on our journey for excellence. We quickly discovered that by learning and applying the Baldrige criteria to Sharp HealthCare we were in a maturing process – insightful and somewhat painful. The practical, robust fundamentals of Baldrige are a challenge for any organization to embody. We learned our lessons from the examiner curriculum, did our homework with and without consultants, and reflected upon our feedback reports. We also found we were getting smarter by talking about processes, looking for alignment and integration.

Being recognized with the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was a memorable and humbling milestone in our journey toward excellence. By accepting this award, we must stay the course and persist in driving continual improvement. This is by no means a trivial undertaking. Because of the higher benchmarks driven by the Baldrige criteria, I see the years ahead as more demanding, yet more rewarding as well. Additionally, we do not take lightly the responsibility of sharing our story with other organizations striving to become role models and leaders. After all, sharing for mutual organizational quality and excellence is the backbone of the Baldrige program. This guide offers incredible insight into all our journeys. We hope it helps you and your organization on your pursuit of performance excellence.

Mike Murphy

President and CEO

Sharp HealthCare

Baldrige Recipient 2007

John Latham and John Vinyard (c) 2003 - 2010

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