KEI Network - Issue #142 - Holiday Greetings and Searching for Excellence

Last week's webinar HERE - "Mental Health, Homelessness and the Clashing Personal and Public Interests" https://youtu.be/t0ARaIV62AYE featured Perry Kinkaide hosting a panel with Leif Gregersen, Murray and Taylor Soroka, and Melissa Dunkley, focusing on homelessness and mental health. They discussed the identity of the homeless, the impact of mental illness, and strategies for community integration amidst declining tolerance for encampments. The audience conversation highlighted the over-representation of Alberta's indigenous and mentally ill in homelessness, the challenges face in the transition from corrections, child welfare, and healthcare services to the community, the strain of immigration on community service capacity. Key topics include the importance of teenage resilience, AI's role in service planning, and the critical need for affordable housing, emphasizing 'housing first' models and comprehensive support. The session concludes with a call for political unity and a focus on affordable housing and prevention particularly in indigenous communities, and interdepartmental leadership in fixing transitional services across all public programs.

A heartfelt wish for you and yours to just relax - it's the holidays!

Throughout 2023 we've explored the clashing of public and personal interests. In the spring we discussed - with the assistance of AI and avatars, the decline of humour. This fall we further explored leadership, the failing of public "transition"services, and the rise of homelessness and mental illness.

As now the holiday season is upon us, let's all resolve to just relax as advised by Timothy Caulfield:

So if you haven't done so already, do find time over the holidays to read Relax, Dammit! - Perry Kinkaide, Editor: KEInetwork.net

WEBINAR - In Praise of Organizational Excellence

Our public Zoomed webinar this week will feature an interview of Dawn Ringrose, author of the followng article and life-ling champion of learning from others in the pursuit of organizational excellence. Join us 4:00PM MST Thursday 28DEC23 HERE https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82390691947

Societal issues like homelessness, healthcare inadequacies, and educational shortcomings increasingly demand innovative solutions. The attached article – “O Canada” HERE cites the broad slide in each of these areas specific to Canada. Through a series of thought-provoking webinar presentations and discussions, the KEI Network has explored practical solutions. Next what can we learn from high-performing role models beyond our borders?

To understand the capacity of excellence as a transformative power we sought various organizations globally that are applying principles of excellence and are recognized for their outstanding achievements. From tackling homelessness with the Glasgow Housing Association's EFQM model to advancing healthcare through the Baldrige model in the United States, and revolutionizing education with the Charter School of San Diego's personalized programs, the successes are both diverse and profound. These case studies not only showcase the remarkable outcomes—such as increased customer and staff satisfaction, reduced healthcare risks, and improved student performance—but also highlight the broader impact of adopting such models.

These international examples - cited below, were selected to inspire and guide Canadian organizations and policymakers in addressing critical issues. They underscore the importance of learning from high performers, harnessing the potential of those on the frontlines, and relentlessly pursuing continuous improvement.

Learning from High Performers

1.0 Homelessness

The Glasgow Housing Association (2017) has successfully implemented the EFQM model and has transformed people's lives and tackled the issue of homelessness. As the largest provider of social rented housing in Scotland, the Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) has provided service to about 67,000 people across Glasgow, owned and managed 41,000 properties and employed about 1,600 people.

The leaders have set a clear vision of “Better homes, Better lives, a Better Glasgow”. Their focus has been on the core business of renting properties and providing services (e.g. repairs, cleaning common areas, support services) for vulnerable customers, so they have a nice place to live and can sustain tenancy.

In doing so, the GHA has achieved tremendous results:

Customer satisfaction (87%) by asking staff to think positively when faced with a customer request or problem.
Staff satisfaction (83%) by empowering them to make decisions for customers and promote ownership and trust.
More personalized service for the customer by placing more staff on the front line enabling them to make quick decisions at the first point of contact, build relationships and add value for customers.
Streamlined and flattened the operating structure to generate savings (£3.4 million) that have been reinvested to further improve the customer experience.

Another interesting example on the topic of homelessness originates in a project done by the West Midlands Homelessness Taskforce in the United Kingdom (2019). The taskforce included representatives from the business, government and non-profit sectors that was convened by Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands. Together, they recognized that homelessness was an issue where not only government and non-profit could play a role but where business could take part as well. They developed a toolkit that provided practical steps that employers could take to prevent homelessness, offer help to organizations tackling it and provide pathways to employment https://www.bitc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bitc-healthycommunities-toolkit-designing-out-homelessness-practical-steps-business-july21.pdf)

2.0 Healthcare

The Baldrige model in the United States has had a significant and positive impact on the provision of quality health care.

Through to 2017, the improvements reported by the award recipients have been impressive:

Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital’s risk-adjusted mortality decreased from 0.73 in 2004 to 0.25 in 2010.
Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital (2016) ranked among the top 10% of hospitals nationally for its performance on measures of emergency center arrival-to-discharge time, compliance with regulations to reduce medication errors, bed turnaround times, radiology and laboratory result turnaround times, and the use of computerized physician order entry. The hospital’s readmission rates for patients treated for acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, and pneumonia were lower than those of hospitals nationwide, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has recognized the evidence-based global harm campaign at the Henry Ford Health System (2008 through 2011) that led to a 31% reduction in harm events.
Schneck Medical Center (2011) has maintained rates of hospital-acquired infections at or below 1% since 2008, and no patient has acquired ventilator-associated pneumonia since 2009.
Atlanticare Regional Medical Center (2008) achieved Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services top 10% performance for patient care measures related to congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and pneumonia.

Broader studies have compared Baldrige organizations with their non-Baldrige peers and shown a marked difference. According to Thomson Reuters, hospitals using the Baldrige model were 6 times more likely to be in the top 100 hospitals and outperform their peers with respect to:

Risk-adjusted mortality index.
Risk-adjusted complications index.
Patient safety index.
CMS core quality measures score.
Severity-adjusted average length of stay.
Adjusted operating profit margin.

A study by Ronald Schulingkamp and John Latham compared Baldrige hospitals with non-Baldrige hospitals across 39 processes of care, patient satisfaction, and outcomes of care metrics, and concluded that “Although not all measures were statistically significant, Baldrige Award recipient hospitals had higher mean values representing higher performance than non-Baldrige Award recipient hospitals in 37 of the 39 (95%) study measures.” (Source: https://www.bpir.com/baldrige-impact-in-health-care/)

3.0 Education

The Charter School of San Diego (2021) has provided free, personalized education to engage and redirect grade 6 to 12 students at risk of not graduating from high school through a hybrid in-person/online study program. The ultimate goal has been to transform students’ lives by helping them graduate with a diploma or by redirecting them back to a traditional school site. The Charter School of San Diego (CSSD) has served about 3,500 students annually, operated 13 instructional and educational resource center classrooms and employed 130 people. It has a Dashboard Alternative School Status (DASS), which means that at least 70% of total enrollment is comprised of high-risk groups such as high-transiency (multiple schools), credit deficient, homeless, or habitually truant students.

Highlights of the CSSD improvement journey have included:

Overall increase in successful transitions (high school graduation or transition back to traditional high school) from 95.7% to 98.1%.

Student performance for grades 6 to 8 and 11 in the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress was 2 times that of all competitors and county and state DASS schools in English Language Arts and 3 times higher in math.
For the past six years, 95% of enrolled students would recommend CSSD to others and 97% of students’ parents would recommend the school to a friend or family member.
Established a leading market position as the largest independent charter school in its operating area and had the largest market share in San Diego.
Graduation rate for high-risk students and student groups reached 77% in the 2019-2020 school year, outperforming competitors and county and state high-risk designated schools.

(Source: https://www.nist.gov/baldrige/charter-school-san-diego-2021)

Closing Thoughts

Considering the issues of homelessness, healthcare and education, excellence models have helped address each one. Admittedly, implementing an excellence model requires a lot of hard work but countless organizations around the world have made the effort and experienced a significant return-on-investment.

In essence, implementing an excellence model provides a threefold opportunity - To harness the knowledge, experience and creativity of the people doing the work, To look outside the organization and learn from others, To focus on continuous improvement.

John Heer, former CEO in the health care field summed it up nicely when he spoke about the experience: “Imagine a workforce so engaged that they were giving you great ideas, they were innovating, they were willing to make the changes that you were trying to instate. . . . They create customer loyalty, higher-quality products and services. They actually participate and help with financial performance, and you can have growth because you’re doing all of those things well.” (Source: https://www.nist.gov/blogs/blogrige/baldrige-answer-how-create-culture-you-need)

About the author:

Dawn Ringrose MBA, FCMC is Principal of Organizational Excellence Specialists and Author of the Organizational Excellence Framework publication and accompanying turnkey toolkit. Building on her work with organizations over the past 40 years, she was driven to make the improvement journey more simple, straightforward, time efficient and cost effective. Her work has been recognized with client organizations earning national excellence awards, articles and chapters being published in reputable journals and encyclopedias, presentations being made at international conferences and the toolkit being selected for nation building projects. Dawn currently serves on the Executive Team of the Organizational Excellence Technical Committee QMD ASQ and the Board of the ISCM Foundation. She can be reached at dawn@organizationalexcellencespecialists.ca