ProMedica wins prestigious Partnership for Excellence award
May 16—Recognized for its innovation and creative workforce development outside the traditional health care system, ProMedica has earned a high-level award from The Partnership for Excellence, a tri-state Baldrige-based program.
TPE, which recognizes top performances of businesses who use the Baldrige Excellence Framework — a process improvement methodology created by congress in 1987 to encourage innovation and improvement — represents Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia, and awards businesses with performance excellence annually.
ProMedica was recently awarded the 2021 Platinum, Governor's Award for Excellence, the highest-level award from the TPE.
"I think it shows the value and the dedication of our people," said Randy Oostra, ProMedica's president and chief executive officer. "And the collective vision around taking care of people in new and different ways. And we have to go well beyond our four walls and that's where health care needs to go."
"It's a belief that when we look at an individual, we have to do a lot more than just take care of them clinically," he continued. "That's job one for us. And then the idea, though, when we look at community health, the social determinants of health are critically important. We've seen during COVID, the impacts it had especially on minorities. So we've got the whole issue around racism, prejudice, and the effect on people's lives. We spend so much money on health care, and we have to look at things more holistically."
While awarding ProMedica, the TPE praised the non-profit health care system for its "vision to create a transformational health and well-being model that integrates the physical and social needs of people at every stage of their life," adding that "ProMedica is a national pioneer and leader in social determinants of health."
Using the Baldrige Excellence Framework as a guide point, TPE reviews all aspects of an organization including these key areas: leadership, strategy, customers, measurement, analysis, knowledge management; workforce, operations, and results.
Pam Jensen, ProMedica's vice president of high-reliability safety and senior care, who headed the application for the award, said the framework guides the company for how it operates day-to-day. She said ProMedica focuses on valuing people and patient-focused excellence, which have effects on performance in a number of different areas.
"We say it's not about the award, we love the award, but it's really about how we do what we do every day," she said. "The framework has a set of approaches for how we lead, how we plan, how we manage all the stakeholders, our patients, families, residents, customers, workforce."
Ms. Jensen said a focus on people including the company's workforce, leads to benchmarks that the TPE highlighted in honoring ProMedica, such as having a lower turnover among nurses and staff members compared to the national average.
In past applications, ProMedica has submitted individual hospitals for their achievements. But this year, it wanted to submit the entire company as an applicant. As part of the evaluation process, TPE reviewed the health organization's provider and clinical services, senior care services, and Paramount health and dental insurance divisions.
The company will be formally honored at an awards banquet later this year, and will be recognized during TPE's annual Quest for Success virtual conference, which will be held on Sept. 13 and 14. Because ProMedica won the platinum-level recognition for a multi-state region, it is eligible to compete for national-level recognition next year.
Mr. Oostra said the vision and the work honored with this award began as long as 10 years ago. It's a journey he's proud of.
"It's a real nice recognition for the work we've done," he said.
