Recognized Yet Again!

As you all remember, we hosted nine examiners from the Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Program in September. The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) manages the Baldrige National Quality Award.

We were selected as one of only 12 organizations to be granted a site visit this year. The examiners came to validate what we put in our application and they also looked for best practices to highlight on a national stage for others to follow. They visited all three of our work systems: Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Gilchrist, and GBMC Health Partners. Everyone went out of their way to tell them our story.

Today, I am honored to officially announce that although we did not achieve the Baldrige award, we have earned a Category Best Practice Recognition for Leadership! This category examines how senior executives guide and sustain the organization and how the organization addresses governance, ethical, legal, and community responsibilities. The GBMC HealthCare System was the only organization this year to receive recognition in leadership and to receive a category best practices recognition for 2019.  We are now officially the first healthcare system in Maryland to be recognized by Baldrige for best practices.

This national recognition validates our work in designing systems to achieve better results.  Receiving this recognition from the Baldrige Award judges strengthens our efforts to redesign care and move us closer to our vision and promise “to every patient, every time, we will provide the care that we would want for our own loved ones.” We have learned so much through the years as we have implemented the Baldrige criteria. Our work is not finished, and we will continue our journey of improvement.

I want to again express my profound gratitude to all members of the GBMC family for your efforts to highlight our outstanding healthcare system. I cannot name all of those who worked so hard for us to achieve this recognition, but I do want to name a few. Carolyn Candiello, our Vice President for Quality and Patient Safety, and her whole team in the Quality Department worked tirelessly, as did Lisa Groff, RN, our Clinical Director of the Women and Children service line. Keith Poisson, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and all our operational leaders did a fabulous job as well. Let me also thank the rest of the Senior Team and all my clinical colleagues and support staff in the hospital, at Gilchrist, and in GBMC Health Partners. You all should be very proud of this achievement.