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1. The Baldrige Standard
In its culture reinvention process, Crouse chose to utilize the Baldrige performance-excellence criteria as a framework. Here are its seven key areas of focus, adapted from the Institute of Standards and Technology’s Baldrige National Quality Program Web site
2. Valuing Worker Welfare Is Just Good Business
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Valuing Worker Welfare Is Just Good Business
"During a financial crisis, taking good care of employees isn’t just the right thing to do, explains Crouse chief quality officer Derrick Suehs—it can also help the bottom line."
By Patrick J. Kiger
Recommend 0
 uring a financial crisis, taking good care of employees isn’t just the right
thing to do, explains Crouse chief quality officer Derrick Suehs—it can also help
the bottom line
In 2002, when Crouse was still fighting to emerge from Chapter
11, the hospital was plagued by a higher-than-normal rate of employee injuries.
A group of workers and managers, led by Suehs, was given the task of investigating,
and discovered that the big problem was nurses who were straining their backs and
shoulders lifting patients. "People have been getting heavier, and it was taking
two or three nurses to move someone," Suehs says. "That could get awkward, and so
a lot of them were getting hurt."
The group also discovered a possible solution—the HoverMatt
patient transfer and repositioning system, a mattress riding on a cushion of air
that can be manipulated safely by a single nurse. The downside was that installing
the newly developed, still-unproven technology would cost $350,000, a hefty sum
for a cash-strapped organization already struggling under the weight of multimillion-dollar
losses. Nevertheless, Suehs and his group persuaded management to somehow find the
money to buy it anyway.
The decision quickly paid off. Within nine months, a reduction
in time lost to injuries enabled Crouse to save $1 million.
Workforce Management,
March 17, 2008, p. 26
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Patrick J. Kiger is a freelance writer based in the Washington, D.C., area. E-mail editors@workforce.com to comment.
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