The winners of the 2016 Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award comprise two small businesses and two health care organizations.
The award—which is the United States’ highest presidential honor for sustainable excellence through visionary leadership, organizational alignment, systemic improvement, and innovation—represents four states. This includes the first award recipient from Idaho and four distinctly different operations, including the first winner from the long-term care and rehabilitation field, and the first award recipient from the textile industry since 1989.
The 2016 Baldrige Award recipients—listed with their category—are:
- Momentum Group of Irvine, California (small business)
- Kindred Nursing and Rehabilitation Center- Mountain Valley, of Kellogg, Idaho (health care)
- Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital of Sugar Land, Texas (health care)
- Don Chalmers Ford of Rio Rancho, New Mexico (small business)
“This year’s honorees are trailblazers in innovation, small business, health care, and sustainable textiles,” says Penny Pritzker, U.S. Commerce Secretary. “Their visionary leadership is helping to power the economy and increase our ability to compete globally. The Commerce Department proudly supports these four outstanding organizations for their unwavering commitment to performance excellence and their dedication to always reaching higher.”
The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) manages the Baldrige Award in cooperation with the private sector. An independent board of examiners recommended this year’s Baldrige Award recipients from a field of 34 applicants after evaluating them in the Baldrige Excellence Framework: leadership; strategy; customers; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, work force, operations; and results. There are six categories for the award: manufacturing, service, small business, health care, education, and nonprofit (including government agencies).
Achievements by the 2016 Baldrige Award winners include:
- New employees at Don Chalmers Ford (DCF) are mentored by senior leaders and work with the general manager using the firm’s “How I Connect” guide that aligns each individual’s role to the company’s core values and to delivering the “DCF Experience.” This has helped increase the retention rate of sales consultants from 56.3 percent in 2011 to 71.4 percent in 2015, and increase gross profit by 13 percent for 2012-2015. Both marks are significantly higher than the national averages of 26 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively.
- In support of its core value of “bettering the world around us,” Momentum Group was the first in its industry to offer a full textile product line of reduced environmental impact fabrics. In just over two decades, Momentum Group’s sales have grown more than 400 percent and have outperformed the industry for 19 years out of the 22 that the firm has been in business.
- For seven consecutive years, Kindred Nursing and Rehabilitation Center—Mountain Valley has achieved a five-star quality rating—the highest possible—from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, a ranking designed to help potential residents, families, and caregivers compare nursing homes. Less than one percent of 15,600 skilled nursing facilities nationwide received the five-star rating over that period of time.
- Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital ranks among the top 10 percent nationally for a number of performance metrics, including 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.