CHC Six Sigma client wins National Baldrige Award

TUPELO - North Mississippi Medical Center has won the nation's most prestigious quality award.

President George W. Bush and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announced that the Tupelo hospital, along with Mesa Products Inc. of Tulsa, Okla. and Premier Inc. of San Diego, have won the 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

"These organizations are among America's best and are role models for any organization striving for world-class performance," said Gutierrez. "The Baldrige Award has grown in stature and is respected and emulated around the world."

Overseen by the National Institute of Standards, the Baldrige National Quality Program was created to recognize the best practices in quality and business performance in U.S. companies. The program gives awards five categories: Manufacturing, service, small business, education and health care.

This year, the only recognized winners were in service, small business and health care.

Past winners include companies such as Boeing, Motorola and Caterpiller.

"It's not about winning; that's not why we're doing this," said John Heer, chief executive of North Mississippi Health Services after the hospital went through a Baldrige site visit in 2005. "Baldrige criteria is how to run a good business" in any type of industry.

The process looks for systematic approaches. Information should flow seamlessly between different parts of the company and continuous quality management should be built into the companies processes, under the Baldrige model.

Businesses, schools and organizations applying for the Baldrige have to demonstrate continuous improvement in seven categories. They submit a 50-page application which is evaluated by a group of trained examiners.

The top organizations are selected for site visits where examiners verify and clarify the application. NMMC had its first site visit during its 2005 application.

The Tupelo hospital started focusing on quality improvement criteria in the early 1990s. It won the Mississippi Quality Award, which uses the Baldrige criteria. This is the fourth year the hospital has applied for the national award.

In the end, it is the process of intensively looking at quality improvement and the detailed feedback from the examiners of opportunities for improvement that are so valuable.

Appeared originally in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, 11/21/2006