The Quality Improvement of the Year Award

Award Process

Each project submitted will be reviewed by a panel of distinguished experts who represent academic, health care organizations, and founding member organizations.Projects will be evaluated using the following criteria:

• Impact of project on organization. Improvement projects should demonstrate meaningful changes which benefit the organization as a whole

• Creative solutions to central problems. Improvement projects should focus on issues that are central to the organization’s functioning, service delivery, and/or quality of services.

• Effectiveness in going beyond the unit. Improvement projects should demonstrate that the changes/improvements are generalized to the entire organization

• Quantitative analysis of important practices. Improvement projects should demonstrate quantitative results of the improvement including:
  • percent reduction in mortality/morbidity
  • percent improvement in customer satisfaction/market share
  • dollar amount in cost savings

All submitted projects will be recognized at the annual awards dinner. Project team members are encouraged to bring a storyboard of their project to showcase at the banquet. CEOs of participating organizations and the media will be invited to attend. The winners will present their work at the ceremony.Project team members will be invited to join the panel of judges for the following year’s award.

Award Categories and Judging Criteria

There are three categories for which awards will be given: clinical excellence, service excellence, and health system risk reduction. Each institution may submit one or more applications in a single category or for multiple categories.

Clinical Excellence

This category includes projects with a focus on improving clinical care and patient outcomes.  For example, projects in the past have focused on decreasing infection rates in the ICU, developing a rapid response team to improve responses to sudden changes in patient conditions, establishing a continuum of care for stroke patients which represents best clinical practices,and reducing pressure ulcer rates in the Transitional Care Unit, to name a few.  Projects in this category should be able to demonstrate quantitative improvement in key outcome variables, such as percent reductions in patient mortality and morbidity, increases in patient health status, and/or dollar amount in cost savings to the organization.

Outcome Measures

1. Patient outcomes (access to services, reduced mortality, reduced morbidity, patient health status)
2. Cost savings
3. Client satisfaction
4. Market share
5. Employee work life

Scoring Method

1. Each outcome measure will receive a score.
               - Not documented (0 points)
               - Modest improvement (2 points)
               - Expected improvement (3 points)
               - Strong improvement (4 points)
               - Center of excellence (5 points)
2. Scores for each of the five outcome measures will be summed to represent the project’s final score (Maximum points: 25)

Service Excellence

This category includes projects with a focus on improving customer service.  Projects in the past have focused on increasing customer satisfaction with outpatient services and scheduling of appointments, lowering drug costs for patients,and increasing staff awareness of National Patient Safety Goals, to name a few.  Projects in this category should be able to demonstrate quantitative improvement in key outcome variables, such as percent improvement in customer satisfaction, percent increase in market share, percent increase in patient access to services, dollar amount in cost savings to the organization and/or improvements in employee work life.

Outcome Measures

1. Patient outcomes (e.g. access to services, reduced length of stay)
2. Client satisfaction
3. Market share
4. Cost savings
5. Employee work life

Scoring Method

1. Each outcome measure will receive a score.
               - Not documented (0 points)
               - Modest improvement (2 points)
               - Expected improvement (3 points)
               - Strong improvement (4 points)
               - Center of excellence (5 points)
2. Scores for each of the five outcome measures will be summed to represent the project’s final score (Maximum points: 25)

Health Systems Risk Reduction

This category includes projects which focus on system issues, for example improved patient safety, reduction in sentinel events (e.g. wrong site surgery, medication error and similar events) as well as anticipation of and/or avoidance of “near misses” i.e.situations that have potential to result in harm to patients or staff.  These projects should demonstrate use of root cause analysis, failure mode analysis and investigative epidemiology in identifying and correcting the causes of sentinel events.  Projects should also include evidence supporting claims that the anticipated root causes are indeed the true causes of the sentinel event.

Outcome Measures

1. Improved patient outcomes (e.g. reduced morbidity/mortality, enhanced patient health status)
2. Magnitude of change (comparing baseline incidents to post-intervention incidents)
3. Reduction in organizational liability
4. Cost savings
5. Employee work life

Scoring Method

1. Each outcome measure will receive a score.
               - Not documented (0 points)
               - Modest improvement (2 points)
               - Expected improvement (3 points)
               - Strong improvement (4 points)
               - Center of excellence (5 points)
2. Scores for each of the five outcome measures will be summed to represent the project’s final score (Maximum points: 25)