The Quality Improvement of the Year Award

Awards Coverage

Images from the 2009 Quality Improvement of the Year Award Ceremony are now available for view.  View the images.

Article in the Mason Gazette about the 2008 Health Care Quality Improvement Awards.

Sponsors of the 2009 Improvement of the Year Award:

• Taylor-Oden Enterprises, Inc, Founding Sponsor
  (Carolyn A. Taylor, BSN'78, MSN'86, MBA'94, and Leslie Taylor)
• David S. Goldberg, MS'06 and Noel Goldberg
• Phillip and Deborah Royalty

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

What is it? The College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University established the Quality Improvement of the Year Award in 2004. The award recognizes quality improvement teams in hospitals or health care systems for their successful improvement efforts and ensures that the hard work of quality improvement teams is appreciated and acknowledged. In doing so, the award brings together quality 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 Quality Improvement of the Year Award broadens this scope by focusing on project-by-project reviews across organizations. As such, the Quality Improvement of the Year Award offers improvement teams a unique opportunity for recognition, not solely within their own organization, but among a prestigious group of leading health care organizations. Our intention is not to reinvent the wheel but to fill a gap for communication and recognition among the leading health care 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 Quality improvement projects. Our method of assessing quality 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 Central 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 Grey stone Park Psychiatric Hospital.

Success continues. 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 health care 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. For 2008 21 projects were submitted with four winners.

We can do it together. It is our goal to expand our target area from the Mid-Atlantic region to include health care 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 health care and in doing so, save lives. With your help, not only can these individuals be given the recognition they deserve, but the Quality 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 2009 Quality Improvement of the Year Award. The deadline for applications is April 6, 2009. Your organization can also become a sponsor of the award. To learn more about our levels of sponsorship and corresponding organizational benefits, please contact Marcia Bear or at 703-993-1931.

Founding Sponsors

• Taylor-Oden Enterprises, Inc.
  (Carolyn A. Taylor, BSN'78, MSN'86, MBA'94, and Leslie Taylor)

Founding Partners

• Business Alliance of George Mason University
• Center for Health Policy, Research and Ethics
• Delmarva Foundation
• District of Columbia Association for Healthcare Quality
• Virginia Association for Healthcare Quality