Announcing The Improvement of the Year Award

New - Read the recent article in the Mason Gazette about the 2008 Health Care Quality Improvement Awards.

2008 Improvement of the Year Award Annual Banquet and Award Ceremony
April 24, 2008, 7:00pm
The Marriott International
3111 Fairview Park Drive
Falls Church, Virginia 22042
Those interested in attending can email cvalent5@gmu.edu for tickets. A limited number of complementary tickets available on a first come, first serve basis.

George Mason University College of Health and Human Services invites healthcare organizations to participate in the “Improvement of the Year” Award.

What is it? The College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University established the Improvement of the Year Award in 2004. The award recognizes quality improvement teams in hospitals or healthcare systems for their successful improvement efforts and ensures that the hard work of improvement teams is appreciated and acknowledged. In doing so, the award brings together improvement specialists from different, and often competing, organizations for collaboration.

Why is it unique? Prestigious health care quality awards are given locally and nationally. Awards such as the Baldridge National Quality Program from the National Institute of Standards and Technology focus on an organization’s total improvement effort. Others, such as Iams from Inova Health System, honor participants within one institution. The Improvement of the Year Award broadens this scope by focusing on project-by-project reviews across organizations. As such, the Improvement of the Year Award offers improvement teams a unique opportunity for recognition, not solely within their own organization, but among a presitgious group of leading healthcare organizations. Our intention is not to reinvent the wheel but to fill a gap for communication and recognition among the leading healthcare systems in the Mid-Atlantic.

We know quality improvement. In 2001, the founder of the award developed and published a methodology for examining the impact of improvement projects. Our method of assessing improvement efforts is well documented and relies on a careful review of the project and a quantitative analysis of improvement practices. Since the publication of our methodology, we have conducted reviews of the improvement efforts of 313 projects in 137 organizations, including Inova Health System, Prince William Health System and CentraHealth in Virginia; George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C.; Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland; and the State of New Jersey Department of Human Services Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.

We had initial success. For the 2005 award, applications were solicited from every hospital in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. We were pleased to receive eight submissions from a diverse range of healthcare organizations. For the 2006 award, we expanded our target region to include hospitals in New Jersey, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, and Kentucky. In 2007, we solicited applications from New York, Connecticut, Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia as well.

We can do it together. It is our goal to expand our target area from the Mid-Atlantic region to include healthcare organizations nationwide by 2012. We ask that you will join us in rewarding these true heroes: the hard working employees at your organization and others, who strive to improve the quality of healthcare and in doing so, save lives. With your help, not only can these individuals be given the recognition they deserve, but the Improvement of the Year Award can become a nationally recognized standard of improvement in the industry.

How can my organization become involved? We are currently accepting submissions for consideration for the 2008 Improvement of the Year Award. The deadline for applications is November 30, 2007. Your organization can also become a sponsor of the award. To learn more about our levels of sponsorship and corresponding organizational benefits, please contact our Project Coordinator.