Using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria to Enable KM and Create a Systemic Organizational Perspective

Health care leaders face an intensifying array of changes and challenges that heighten the need for systematic approaches to knowledge management at the organizational level. Healthcare costs are rising, biomedical science and technological advances are burgeoning, and recent reports indicate that medical errors are widespread. In its report on strategies for achieving improvement in the quality of healthcare delivered to Americans, the Institute of Medicine recommends building organizational supports for change such as the redesign of care based on best practices, use of information technologies to capture and use clinical information, and incorporation of performance and outcome measurements for improvement and accountability (Institute of Medicine, 2001). The Baldrige National Quality Program and its Healthcare Criteria for Performance Excellence (Baldrige National Quality Program, 2003) offer both the framework and the tools to guide organizations in building these critical supports. This chapter describes the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and its framework, criteria, and scoring system. It provides insight into the pitfalls that stand between an organization and successful KM, as well as examples of ways in which healthcare groups and institutions are becoming learning organizations — successfully employing cycles of learning and effective knowledge management systems in order to enhance performance and better meet the needs of their patients and other customers. The Baldrige Healthcare Criteria for Performance Excellence offer a useful framework for developing a knowledge management system at the organizational level in an increasingly complex environment. Use of the Baldrige Criteria will enhance the knowledge assets of your organization and enable your organization to deliver more value to patients and other customers. These criteria will also improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness through the management of individual, team, and organizational knowledge.