Community Hospital wins top state recognition

McCook, Nebraska -- Community Hospital was notified this week the hospital has been selected by a panel of judges as a 2015 recipient of the Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence (RMPEx) Peak award, the highest RMPEx honor for performance excellence awarded in Colorado. Community Hospital was among three recipients, and the only hospital, to receive the Peak award.

"Community Hospital is extremely proud to be named as a Peak Performance award recipient," said Community Hospital President & CEO, Jim Ulrich. "This award, in addition to the Timberline award in 2014, completes our journey through the RMPEx series," he added. "It is very gratifying to have completed this leg of our Journey to Excellence in just two years' time."

A team of six RMPEx examiners visited Community Hospital November 2-6 for a site visit. The examiners had extensively read Community Hospital's 50-page Peak application prior to the visit and came armed with questions about the processes and results used to advance Community Hospital's Journey to Excellence. Areas the examiners explored were leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement/analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, operations focus and results.

This is the first time the hospital has applied for the Peak award. In 2014, Community Hospital applied for and won the Timberline award, one step under the Peak award, the same year it started the process of working with the Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence program.

Winning the award confirms the efforts Community Hospital has made on its Journey to Excellence. Reflected in its mission of Regional Healthcare Excellence, the hospital realigned its focus strategically this year by refining its 3- to 5-year objectives from 16 to only three. The first of the three objectives adopted was: "Advance our Journey to Excellence through further adoption of the Baldrige criteria."

"Now that we have completed the leg of our journey through the Colorado state RMPEx award series (by achieving its highest award), we will turn our attention toward the national stage and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award," Ulrich said. "Our journey is not about the awards, but the continual improvements we put into place in our organization to provide a better patient experience and higher quality of care," he added. "These awards serve as great validation of the progress on our journey."

"This is not an easy journey but we feel it is one that organizations like ours are very dedicated and passionate to take," said Ulrich. "The RMPEx award program director expressed that he saw great improvement at Community Hospital between last year's visit during the Timberline application and this year's visit for the Peak award application. His only regret is that we are now graduating from their state program in just two years; but he is really excited about the hospital taking that next step in our journey to the national Malcolm Baldrige application and award process.

"Today, we are even more passionate about our Journey to Excellence. This continues to be a challenging journey because what is perceived to be excellence today may be perceived as more of a normal expectation by our customers in the future. Thus, as an organization we have to continue to raise the bar and push ourselves to raise our levels of performance," Ulrich concluded.

2015 RMPEx award recipients include:

Peak Awards

AlloSource, Centennial, Colorado

Community Hospital, McCook, Nebraska

Donor Alliance, Inc., Denver, Colorado

Foothills Award

El Paso County School District 49, Peyton, Colorado

Community Hospital is one of only eight organizations to earn a Peak Award in the 14-year history of RMPEx. RMPEx is the regional chapter of the prestigious national Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, established by Congress and President Ronald Reagan in 1987. It is the only presidential-level award for quality in the U.S. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recognizes U.S. organizations in business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors for performance excellence.

Community Hospital was built in 1974 and is a 25-bed critical access, Joint Commission accredited facility. As a regional hospital, it is equipped to provide advanced care for residents in Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas. Community Hospital provides advanced cancer services including chemotherapy and radiation oncology. The Medical Specialists Center offers 30 visiting medical specialists who come to McCook on a scheduled basis to provide close-to-home medical care. The hospital also has two rural healthcare clinics in Trenton, and Curtis, Nebraska.