Michigan Quality Council names Sparrow Hospital 2012 Quality Leadership Award recipient
Published: Sept. 4, 2012
The Michigan Quality Council (MQC) announces that Sparrow Hospital of Lansing is the 2012 Quality Leadership Award recipient.
The Michigan Quality Leadership Award is the highest honor for organizational performance excellence in the state, and Sparrow Hospital is only the eighth hospital to earn this recognition. It is awarded after a rigorous review by a team of examiners who perform a comprehensive site visit and then submit a report for final evaluation to an independent panel of judges.
The MQC's Leadership award program is modeled after the national Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. Both programs evaluate an organization for excellence in seven categories of performance: leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; workforce focus; operations focus; and results. Participating organizations receive a feedback report identifying strengths and opportunities for improvement; those that demonstrate mature processes and outstanding results may become award recipients.
"Sparrow Hospital's leadership aligns the entire organization to accomplish objectives through the vision, strategic planning process, balanced scorecard, and leadership evaluation methodology. This alignment ensures that the entire workforce builds a strong patient-focused environment. Sparrow Hospital has created an accountable culture focused on action to improve healthcare outcomes for patients and their families", said Geri Markley, executive director of the Michigan Quality Council. "Sparrow Hospital is a role model for Michigan organizations."
"This achievement required incredible teamwork. We prepared an exceptional application but the on-site review was even more outstanding. Once again, as with the previous site reviews from outside organizations, our Board Members, Physicians, Nurses, Caregivers and Volunteers clinched this for us with the MQC Reviewers," said Dennis Swan, Sparrow Hospital President and CEO. "We can now apply for the prestigious Baldrige National Quality Award, which reflects our ongoing commitment to achieve organizational excellence. Since we began our Baldrige journey in 2005, all of the improvements we have undertaken have been for the benefit of our Patients."
Founded in 1896, Sparrow Hospital is mid-Michigan's premier health care organization, featuring the region's only Level 1 Trauma Center and formal affiliations with Michigan State University's three human health colleges. Sparrow is the first health system in Michigan and among the first in the nation to be selected to join the prestigious Mayo Clinic Care Network, and was recently recognized as a top health system in the United States by Thomson Reuters. Additionally, Sparrow Hospital is one of only 6 percent of hospitals nationally to have earned the Nurse Magnet Distinction from the American Nurses Credentialing Center. For more information on Sparrow, visit Sparrow.org.
The MQC was created in 1993 by business and government leaders to promote performance excellence practices that achieve results in business, education, healthcare, and non-profit organizations throughout Michigan. The primary service of the Council is providing feedback to organizations to help them improve, culminating in recognizing top Michigan performers. The MQC is now affiliated with Cleary University.
The MQC can be found on the World Wide Web at www.michiganquality.org. For more information, contact 734-929-9124 or mquality@cleary.edu.
