Did Baldrige Herald VA as World-Class Health Care Role
Model?
A Testimonial that Baldrige may regret
Stunning
News:
The Veterans Administration (VA)
has been using Baldrige for more than 15 years to guide its
'improvement' . . . so, why are veterans, veterans'
families, the media, and even the politicians complaining
about the VA? . . . which the Baldrige Program has
advocated as "arguably the best public health
care system in the world"
Baldrige BLOGRIGE appears to herald VA as a world-class HC role model . . .
really! . . . (read
the Baldrige VA Testimonial Blog
here): And, here is one of the key quotes from
the Blog link: "At the highest level, the
Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has used the Baldrige Criteria
enterprise-wide and participated in the Carey program since its inception (in
2000). That
coupled with the adoption of other enterprise-wide engineering and management
best practices, has been responsible for the transformation of VA over the
years from a health care system with widespread quality issues, to arguably the
best public health care system in the world today, as evidenced by being the
benchmark for many key health care metrics espoused by the Center for Medicare
and Medicaid Services, says Holliday".
Similarly, VA's National Cemetery Administration (NCA) has integrated the
Baldrige Criteria into its "Organizational Assessment and Improvement Program",
which it uses to evaluate all VA national cemeteries. As a result of building
the Baldrige Criteria best practices and other quality improvement practices
into the NCA management system, it has achieved the highest customer
satisfaction rating ever recorded by the University of Michigan's Customer
Satisfaction Index of 94%, according to Holliday.
[Scott Holliday, Director of VA Management Systems Improvement]
Note: Baldrige appears to have heralded this VA NCA account of "the
highest customer satisfaction rating ever recorded by the University of
Michigan's Customer Satisfaction Index" in
late 2012 after the NCA was caught-in-the-act of misidentifying hundreds of
veterans' graves during a partial audit reported in early 2012. The VA's version
of the Baldrige Award has gone no less than four times to NCA operations.
What happened to the VA Carey Award?: Baldrige describes the VA Carey Award
as being basically equivalent to the Baldrige Award. However, it appears that
the Carey Award website has gone dormant since 2012. It appears that the 2014
celebration of the most recent winner of the top Carey Award (VA Portland) has
been postponed . . . if not permanently cancelled. BTW, VA Portland was ranked
almost last (125 out of 128) among VA hospitals for patient care wait time . . .
however, this did not prevent them from taking top Carey Award honors . . .
The Baldrige Blog appears to report that VA was using the Baldrige Criteria
to achieve 'world-best public service health care' and an 'unsurpassed level of
customer satisfaction at the National Cemetery Administration. So, the question
is: Why did VA stop the Carey Program if it is key to VA's world-class quality?
This could leave the impression with some that one of VA's immediate
improvement actions includes stopping the use of the Baldrige Criteria partially
. . . if not, totally.
And, why did they change the Portland VA leadership shortly after winning
the Carey Award?
Editorial Note: It appears that what is common to several if not all
VA-activities cited by Baldrige includes:
-
1.4 million 'dropped calls' on the veterans suicide hotline
in 2015 alone
-
VA claims of world-best and unsurpassed excellence,
- Falsification of data,
- Cover up, and
- Intimidation of employees
CNN has provided a succinct summary of VA's chronic history of failing to
effectively serve our veterans and our taxpayers . . .
read CNN: VA Chronology
Developing . . .: Dr. Roulan Stacey (Chair of Baldrige Board
of Overseers) July 17, 2014
quote excerpt to US
House Committee on Veterans' Affairs: "The [Baldrige Award] program
initially revolutionized manufacturing in the United States, and is is now
having the same effect on health care."