The Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award, One Year Later: What Have We Learned?

This coming Wednesday, Nov. 24, will be the one-year anniversary of our achieving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the highest level of recognition for performance excellence in the nation. 

Our accomplishment represented the first time that the Baldrige was awarded to a healthcare company in Maryland. We were one of only five organizations nationwide to receive the award in 2020 and one of only 29 healthcare recipients in any state in two decades of the award’s history. 

A few months prior to the announcement a team of highly-skilled and dedicated volunteer examiners reviewed all three of our work systems: Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Gilchrist, and GBMC Health Partners. During their virtual visit (due to the COVID-19 pandemic), these examiners validated the information we submitted in our application. Following the site visit, the examiner team scored our performance and submitted a report to the Board of Judges who ultimately determined that we had achieved the award. 

The purpose of the award is to get leaders of organizations to implement the Baldrige criteria to drive the creation of reliable systems and to work to continually improve those systems. The criteria stem from the work of people like W. Edwards Deming and Walter Shewhart dating back to the early and mid-twentieth century. Their work explains how almost all people are well trained, work hard, and are trying to do a good job. They were able to also realize that when things go wrong it is almost always because the system was not well-designed. GBMC’s achieving the award is recognition that we get it; that we cannot rely on hard work and good intentions alone, but that we must design reliable systems to get to excellent performance.  

We did not receive a perfect score when we achieved the award- no one ever does- and achieving the Baldrige was not the end of our improvement journey. We have continued to study the criteria, further deploy our standard work, and test changes to our system over the last year. Continually improving our implementation of the Baldrige criteria has helped us move faster toward our vision of being the community-based true system of care that can deliver to every patient, every time, the care we want for our own loved ones.

The ongoing use of our Leadership System helps us improve our performance every day. And we move even faster when we integrate our Leadership System with our Performance Review Process (our daily Lean Management System walk is an example of this) and our Performance Management System. 

So, let me once again thank all my colleagues in the GBMC HealthCare System for the achievement of this award and for your outstanding implementation of the criteria and continual improvement of our systems as we drive toward our vision!

Farewell Dr. Kuchar!
Earlier this week, I attended a farewell celebration for Dr. John J. Kuchar. After 32 years of patient care at GBMC and serving as GBMC's Chairman of Anesthesiology for the last five years, Dr. Kuchar is departing GBMC to pursue new opportunities. 

The department flourished under Dr. Kuchar’s dedicated leadership. Throughout his career, he has mentored countless anesthesiologists and contributed substantially to the professional development of many others.  

Please join me in thanking Dr. Kuchar for his many years of service and important contributions. He has truly left an indelible mark, and we wish him all the best in his next endeavors.