USA - Health partners wins NQF's 2007 National Quality Healthcare Award

Citation

(2007), "USA - Health partners wins NQF's 2007 National Quality Healthcare Award", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 20 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2007.06220cab.010

USA - Health partners wins NQF's 2007 National Quality Healthcare Award

Keywords: Healthcare quality, Performance management, Healthcare improvement

The National Quality Forum announced today that HealthPartners, a Minnesota-based integrated care delivery system, has been selected as the 14th recipient of the National Quality Forum (NQF) annual National Quality Healthcare Award. The NQF award is conducted in partnership with Modern Healthcare magazine and is underwritten by the Cardinal Health Foundation. The jury-reviewed award recognizes a healthcare organization for its proactive and exemplary response to the national call for quality improvement and accountability by successfully using performance measurement to drive improvements in quality and efficiency and fostering a culture of transparency and accountability to patients and the community.

“We are very pleased to name HealthPartners the recipient of the 2007 Award,” said Janet Corrigan, PhD, NQF’s President and CEO. “This organization raises the bar for health system performance and is truly a role model for making quality improvement and public reporting the centerpiece of the health system’s mission and business model.” “We are honored to receive national recognition for our commitment to quality improvement and public reporting,” said Mary Brainerd, HealthPartners President and CEO. “As a not-for-profit organization, our mission is to improve the health of our members, our patients and the community. Our focus is simple: to transform health care. We work hard to offer care that is safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and patient-centered throughout our organization and to be responsive and accountable to our community. It means a great deal to us to be recognized by the National Quality Forum for this work and it is a great inspiration to all of us at HealthPartners to continue our effort.” An 18-person jury participated in a “blinded” review of applications from a wide range of organizations to select this year’s winner. The jury used a uniform set of scoring criteria to evaluate the extent to which the applicant’s approach to performance improvement was systematic, well-deployed, effective, innovative, sustainable and replicable.

Gary Gottlieb, MD, President and CEO of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, last year’s recipient of the Award, and Chair of the 2007 Jury Panel said, “The award attracted a very strong set of applicants this year, but one stood out for its clear, systematic approach to quality improvement and extraordinary commitment to transparency and community involvement. Seeing this level of excellence in such a large and multi-faceted organization made it particularly remarkable.” HealthPartners www.healthpartners.com is the largest consumer governed non-profit health care organization in the nation and is committed to improving the health of its members, patients and the community. HealthPartners has a longstanding commitment to performance measurement and quality improvement. Numerous state and national organizations have recognized the organization for its achievements. The National Quality Healthcare Award was created in 1993 by the National Committee for Quality Health Care and is the first award of its kind to recognize outstanding quality-driven healthcare organizations. For 14 years, the Award has provided encouragement for improvements in quality through public recognition of organizations’ accomplishments. The first award went to The Henry Ford Health System (Detroit) in 1994; other prominent prior recipients include Intermountain Healthcare (1996), St Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City (1997) (which went on to receive one of the first Baldrige Awards in healthcare), Northwestern Memorial HealthCare (2005), and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (2006). The Award moved to the National Quality Forum (NQF) as a result of the 2006 merger with the National Committee for Quality Health Care.