September CEO Update

Campbell County Health just submitted our first of several applications in the journey toward the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. This award was established by Congress in 1987 and named after former Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige in response to foreign competition in product and process quality (some of you may remember when foreign cars were of much higher quality than American made vehicles). This award was extended to healthcare in 1988, recognizing only two healthcare organizations in our region in the past nine years.

I’ve been asked by some of our staff who are wary of writing award applications, why are we doing this AGAIN? We’ve been fortunate to have had several important quality and safety awards in the past year or so:

• a grade of “A” on the Leapfrog Group patient safety survey
• we were named one of the Top 20 Rural Community Hospitals in the country by the National Rural Health Association.

You’ll see several other awards in our Fall 2017 Health Matters newsletter for our Cardiology and Dialysis programs, and both the hospital and The Legacy have received quality excellence awards during this year's Wyoming Quality Health Care Conference. We've received these awards because everyone in the organization is working toward the same goal of Excellence Every Day.

Those awards are tangible reflections of our work to improve our safety and quality and I’m very proud of the many employees and providers that had a part in making them happen. But I’m just not satisfied with sitting on our laurels. One of the pillars on which we base our work is Care, and we define that as the Constant Pursuit of Safety and Quality. That means we are always striving to improve our care and processes so we can take better care of our community.

Because the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is so rigorous, I expect it’s going to take us three to five years to get there. It will challenge every aspect of the organization to improve performance and examine our results internally and externally with a view for the future. I’m excited for the journey and will keep you informed of our progress along the way.

Sincerely,

Andy Fitzgerald, CEO