February 11, 2015 - Residents of Fredericksburg, TX, have long treasured their local hospital—Hill Country Memorial (HCM)—even before the organization was honored with the 2014 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
Nearly 93 percent of Gillespie County contributed to Hill Country’s construction, giving this self-reliant community a deep sense of investment. When its doors first opened in 1971, more than 5,000 area residents waited to tour the new facility, in an hours-long line that snaked around the building.
“I can remember my own parents donating money for Hill Country to be built,” says Holly Schmidt, IT director. “It’s truly a hospital that’s founded for the community, and by the community.” This unwavering support likely helped to inspire HCM along its road to Baldrige—known nationwide as the highest presidential honor for improvement, visionary leadership, and performance excellence through innovation.
“Winning Baldrige is such a tremendous honor. It’s motivated us to work even harder, so we can continue to exceed our patients’ expectations,” says CEO Jayne Pope, who adds that their MEDITECH EHR also played an important role in helping the hospital to fulfill its potential.
“Baldrige is all about measuring performance and influence, and being the best that we can be,” says CEO Jayne Pope. “HCM is very data driven, and much of the reported data is mined from our EHR, which helped us to benchmark our performance.”
And their dedication paid off: HCM consistently ranks in the top 10 percent nationally on CMS clinical process measures, healthcare outcomes, and patient experience measures. HCM also ranks 57th out of nearly 3,200 hospitals nationwide in CMS’s Value-Based Purchasing program.
“We couldn’t serve our patients half as well if we didn’t have our EHR to gather information and make sure quality metrics are in place,” Pope adds. “Our commitment to quality, patients, and technology has been our driving force since the very beginning. MEDITECH has certainly helped us live up to those core values, right up to the present day.”
Outperforming Others
Ranking 57th out of nearly 3,200 hospitals nationwide in CMS’s Value-Based Purchasing program, Hill Country Memorial’s financial performance improved significantly over just a three year span.