Benchmarking award winning health care organizations in the USA

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to benchmark the use of process improvement techniques among US health care organizations that won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Design/methodology/approach – The applications from 13 Baldrige award winning health care organizations were researched to determine which process improvement techniques were used most frequently to guide their operations. Findings – The results from this study identify several best practices in process improvement techniques. Furthermore, the study pinpoints in which aspect of performance that a process improvement technique is most likely to be used. Research limitations/implications – Only applications from organizations winning the Baldrige award have been studied. The identity and application for organizations that do not win the award are not released to the public. Statistical analysis of the data is limited to the relatively small number (13) of award winners. Practical implications – The results clearly show that there are certain process improvement techniques used by a majority of the Baldrige winners. It is not possible to guarantee that the use of these same techniques by other health care organizations will result in performance improvement, only that the winners used the techniques and have achieved a high level of performance. The results identify processes for further benchmarking studies. Originality/value – The process improvement techniques identified in this study have been used by successful health care organizations. This information may be useful to other health care organizations when deciding on which process improvement techniques to pursue in order to improve their own performance. While the Baldrige award process has driven benchmarking efforts, this study uses the Baldrige process to identify benchmarking opportunities for process improvement in health care organizations.