What Excellence Every Day means to CCMH

Excellence Every Day.

That is CCMH’s goal as an organization. That is my goal as a CEO, and I leave for home each night asking myself if I accomplished my work with excellence that day.

Recently, someone asked me what Excellence Every Day really meant, and I am glad they did. It made me stop and think how to articulate it for myself, but also to all employees, medical staff and the community.

For many years we have participated in continuous process improvement to make CCMH a better place for patients to receive care. We have called it CQI, CQM, TQM, and many other variations. We have talked about PDCA: plan, do, check, and act, which is a cycle of continuous improvement, usually seen in a wheel. In the realm of customer service, we have had a variety of programs and efforts, each and every one with the heart-felt intention of improving the experience for our patients, residents, and other customers. In the financial realm, we have had productivity systems, budgets, management systems and training that we hoped would decrease cost, and improve efficiency. Finally, in the area of human resources we have had many efforts meant to improve the work environment, whether employee evaluations, employee engagement ideas, or merit and market raises; all of these are meant to try and recognize and reward employees for their great work.

So what is Excellence Every Day?

Excellence Every Day, in its simplest form, is how one performs their work, practices their vocation and treats themself and others in the best way possible every single day. At Campbell County Health, it is a framework to describe how we take care of people in our community. Healthcare is constantly changing and how we change will determine our future and our goal to be the first choice for healthcare and wellness in Wyoming. Excellence Every Day brings together all the tools and resources to improve clinical outcomes, customer experience, employee engagement and financial performance by putting patients, residents, clients and customers at the center of everything we do. Finally, Excellence Every Day creates a great place to work by allowing our employees to have a voice and an empowering ability to utilize their ideas to help pursue perfection.

There are a couple of tools we are using to help us enact change. In 2010, CCMH began implementing Lean Process Improvement principles to help employees identify the activities that do not provide value to the organization or patients, and develop processes to improve those activities. In October 2012, CCMH announced its partnership with the Studer Group, to help us create a better place for employees to work, physicians to practice medicine and patients to receive care—essentially creating a culture of service excellence. Our goal is to have each patient and resident always have a great healthcare experience at our organization.

We articulate our goals through the CCMH strategic plan. What it all really comes down to is all CCMH employees being engaged in the most important effort of taking care of people. It really is up to each and every one of us, every day with every customer interaction we have. We are striving to attain our Vision:

CCMH will be the first choice for healthcare and wellness in Wyoming by providing Excellence Every Day.

I hope the next time you hear the term Excellence Every Day you won’t think about a phrase but about a framework of improvement in every aspect of what we all are engaged in doing: caring for the health and wellness of our family, friends, and neighbors.

~ Andy