NEWS RELEASE: March 31, 2005

Presbyterian Healthcare Services Earns State's Highest Quality Award

ALBUQUERQUE, NM - Presbyterian Healthcare Services, New Mexico's only private, not-for-profit healthcare system and its largest provider of care, is set to receive the state's highest distinction for quality and performance excellence, the Zia Award, at a Quality New Mexico (QNM) ceremony tonight.

Presbyterian is one of two organizations in New Mexico, along with Veterans Administration Cooperative Studies Program in Albuquerque, to receive the Zia.

"Earning Quality New Mexico's Zia Award is a tremendous achievement for the people of Presbyterian," said Jim Hinton, president and CEO. "We want to give our patients and members healthcare that is more efficient, more reliable, safer and costs less. Our customers deserve that kind of commitment from us and our employees are working hard to drive quality throughout our system."

Presbyterian employs the Malcolm Baldrige criteria in its quality pursuit. The Baldrige criteria are a framework to improve overall performance that can be used by any business or organization. Seven categories make up the award criteria: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, human resource focus, process management and business results.

Presbyterian first adopted Malcolm Baldrige quality improvement principles five years ago after studying several widely-practiced methods. "For us," said Hinton, "Baldrige is the best way to get better faster for the people we serve. We also think Baldrige is better suited to healthcare, which is and will always be about people helping people."

For the next signpost on the quality journey, Presbyterian has set its sights on earning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. This is the award, established by the U.S. Congress in 1987, to inspire American businesses to make quality breakthroughs in order to compete globally on performance.

J.J. Parsons, vice president of business development and contracting, heads up the quality improvement process for the entire system. She explains that Presbyterian has set the bar high for the right reasons.

"Any business or organization using quality principles to get better will tell you that it's not about winning an award. We've set our sights on the award because we know that we can only earn it when we have truly built something better for our customers," Parsons said.

The quality process at Presbyterian boils down to focusing on results, using accurate measurement and data to assure results can be tracked, and rigorously fixing the work processes in order to achieve the desired results. Today, Presbyterian has created a dashboard of more than 50 measurements it tracks for progress and results. These range from healthcare results - such as patient safety measures or how the system is helping patients manage their diabetes - to employee satisfaction scores, how fast patients can get in to see their physician, financial benchmarks and more.

"When you know what you want to achieve, and you're using accurate measurement," Hinton said, "You learn pretty quickly where the organization is not performing up to the customer's expectation. That's where the opportunities are. We identify the processes that are not working well and jump in to fix them."

The Board of Directors for Presbyterian, made up of community volunteers who govern the not-for-profit organization, push its leadership team to benchmark the organization's results nationally, so that excellent outcomes are meaningful compared to the top performers in healthcare. Another important concern is finding balance between financial results and health improvement results.

Chartered by the Governor in 1994, QNM is a non-profit organization committed to improving New Mexico by helping businesses, educational institutions, government, health care, and non-profit agencies achieve performance excellence through education and recognition.

Presbyterian serves to improve the health of individuals, families and communities. Presbyterian Healthcare Services was founded in New Mexico in 1908, and is the state's only private, not-for-profit healthcare system. As New Mexico's largest provider of healthcare, Presbyterian includes seven hospitals, the state's largest health plan, a strong and growing medical group, as well as home healthcare, outpatient centers, ground ambulance services and more. Presbyterian employs more than 7,500 people throughout New Mexico.

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