For Immediate Release

ASQ Brings Healthcare Quality Experts to Capitol Hill

Washington, D.C., May 4 – The crisis, complexity, competing interests, and compassion that drive healthcare delivery in the United States came through in a Healthcare Forum held April 26, 2006, on Capitol Hill by the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), a co-chair of the House 21st Century Health Care Caucus, sought answers and new ideas from the panel — an unprecedented gathering of healthcare organizations that have won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Healthcare “is affecting everything, everywhere in our country, in our economy,” Kennedy said as he opened the discussion, which was timed to coincide with the last day of the Baldrige Award’s Quest for Excellence Conference here. “You have demonstrated we can do better,” Kennedy said. “As [Baldrige] awardees you are delivering excellence. You have been doing quality.

“But lawmakers have not done enough to lead other healthcare providers to follow the examples of the Baldrige winners,” Kennedy added. “We don’t have the urgency that we need on the Hill.”

Kennedy publicly recognized the high-performing healthcare powerhouses attending the session, then pushed for answers from the experts for nearly two hours.

The panel, assembled by ASQ at the request of the caucus, included:

• G. Richard Hastings, president and CEO, St. Luke’s Health System, Kansas City, Missouri, a 2003 Baldrige Award winner.
• John Heer, president and CEO, North Mississippi Health Services.
• Deborah Baehser, chief nursing officer and senior vice president of clinical care services; and Richard Lovering, senior vice president for operations, RWJ University Hospital Hamilton, Hamilton, New Jersey, a 2004 Baldrige Award winner
• Frank J. Sardone, president and CEO, Bronson Healthcare Group, Kalamazoo, Mich., a 2005 Baldrige Award winner.
• Bill Thompson, senior vice president for strategic development, SSM Health Care, St. Louis, Mo., a 2002 Baldrige Award winner.
• Doug Wojcieszak, chairman, Sorry Works! Coalition, Glen Carbon, Ill.

Kennedy sought the panelists’ support for one of his key legislative initiatives, the 21 st Century Health Information Act, which seeks to streamline the creation of secure, confidential electronic healthcare records systems. Panelists agreed that new health-information technology has already improved patient care and outcomes in their organizations. But, said Sardone (Bronson Healthcare Group), such efforts must go further.

Better access to healthcare data has added “much greater transparency” to the process of making and managing healthcare decisions, Sardone said. But much work remains to help the general public understand these data, and to reassure people that healthcare providers are making decisions in their patients’ best interests. How, he asked, do providers assure the public “that we’re not providing incentives not to treat the patient?”

Hastings said lawmakers could help this process by eliminating restrictions that keep doctors offices from accessing electronic medical records maintained by hospitals.

Baehser said her hospital has successfully implemented processes and measurements to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety. Kennedy asked if RWJ has been “rewarded for that” by insurers. “Not yet,” Baehser said, “but we bring these things to the table with them.”

Wojcieszak provided insight on dealing with adverse medical events from the perspective of Sorry Works!, a coalition of physicians, healthcare providers, lawyers, and patient advocates promoting full disclosure and apologies for medical errors when root-cause analysis shows that standards of care are not met.

Kennedy asked the panelists if they would support legally requiring “disclosure of true performance” by healthcare providers – a process not unlike the Baldrige Award application process, which requires organizations to provide data on performance and results. Thompson responded with a commentary on the intricacies of selecting appropriate measures for true performance. He said that many SSM pay-for-performance projects are asking, “Are we doing things right for the patients? We’re not asking, and analyzing, are we doing the right things…we see patients when they are sick. Who’s incentivized to keep the patient out of the hospital?”

Others in attendance included panel moderator Dr. Kate Goonan, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Performance Excellence, an ASQ member and a former Baldrige examiner; ASQ Healthcare Division chair Celeste Nair and chair-elect Douglas Dotan; Dr. Robert G. Burney of the U.S. State Department, who authors a healthcare blog for ASQ’s Web site at http://www4.asq.org/blogs/healthcare/; Harry Hertz, director of the Baldrige program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; Laurel Nelson-Rowe, an ASQ managing director; Ray Zielke, ASQ healthcare market manager; and several representatives of ASQ’s Washington, D.C., Section.

The American Society for Quality www.asq.org has been the world's leading authority on quality for 60 years. With more than 90,000 individual and organizational members, the professional association advances learning, quality improvement, and knowledge exchange to improve business results, and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide. As champion of the quality movement, ASQ offers technologies, concepts, tools, and training to quality professionals, quality practitioners, and everyday co ns umers, encouraging all to Make Good Great®. ASQ has been the sole administrator of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 1991.  Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the 60-year-old organization is a founding partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a prominent quarterly economic indicator, and also produces the Quarterly Quality Report.