While health care administrators are tasked with balancing and managing the complex demands of HSOs, the work is not over once strategies are in place to maximize performance and contribute to sustainable business practice. Continuous monitoring and evaluation are necessary components of successful process improvement and of determining approaches to propelling the organization forward. Thus, performance measurement and evaluation is crucial not only for supporting HSO functions but also for fostering an environment that is sensitive to and mindful of change for promoting organizational success.

This week, you explore performance measurement methods used by integrated systems and HSOs. You also examine Baldrige criteria for HSOs and consider how health care administrators might implement strategies for and approaches to receiving Baldrige criteria.

What does it mean to achieve performance excellence in an HSO? What types of leadership approaches and strategies might health care administrators adopt in order to propel their HSO toward performance excellence?

The Baldrige Program seeks to improve the performance of U.S. organizations with a supreme customer focus. To that end, the Baldrige Program recognizes those institutions and organizations that demonstrate enhanced competitiveness and adopt commitment to quality and enhanced performance while delivering practices that are “best in class.” Within the context of HSOs, achieving performance excellence as defined by the Baldrige Program indicates an organization has successfully implemented strategies aimed at delivering effective health care in the marketplace and high-quality, successful business practices for sustainable success.

For this Assignment, review the Learning Resources for this week and examine the Baldrige criteria for HSOs. Then, select your HSO or an HSO with which you are familiar. Consider how you as a current or future health care administrator might apply the Baldrige criteria and framework to the HSO you selected.

The Assignment (4–6 pages):

• Describe the HSO you selected and explain which Baldrige criteria you will use to evaluate the HSO.
• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your HSO according to your selected Baldrige criteria. Be specific and provide examples.
• Explain what steps are needed for the HSO to qualify for Baldrige recognition. Be sure to include how you would implement these steps and why these steps are important for meeting the Baldrige standards.
• Describe what challenges you would expect to encounter when preparing the HSO for Baldrige recognition, and explain why you would expect these challenges.
• Explain what action steps you would recommend as a current or future health care administrator to address the challenges previously described.