Question: Briefly define the Malcolm Baldrige Award. Name, research, and very briefly talk about at least one organization that has (recently) won the Baldrige Award in the healthcare sector. What factors led to the organization’s success in winning the award.

Question 1a:
Access the CMS Hospital Compare website and review the quality scores for 3-5 hospitals in Manhattan, NY.
a) At which hospital would you choose to receive care (for you and/or family members) and why?
b) List the different measures that this website uses to compare between different hospitals?
c) Use the “Timely and Effective Care” measure to compare between the selected hospitals (it is recommended to build a table to answer this question).
d) Select three types of infections (under “Death and Complications”) and compare the performance of the selected hospitals?

Question 1b:
Briefly define the Malcolm Baldrige Award. Name, research, and very briefly talk about at least one organization that has (recently) won the Baldrige Award in the healthcare sector. What factors led to the organization’s success in winning the award. Provide a list of all healthcare organizations that won the award in the past 5 years.

Question 3:
Identify a healthcare process that’s of interest to you (e.g., emergency room, inpatient pharmacy, radiology, labs). Then look for two different studies that have analyzed this process and provide two process maps that have been used to describe the selected process (i.e., two studies developing process maps for the same process). Describe the differences and similarities between these process maps and provide an overall critique.

Question 4a:
In class, we discussed the term “Never Events”, which was first introduced in 2002 by Ken Kizer. Within this context, please answer the following questions: [Page Limit: 1-2 pages]
1. What are Never Events and what is the rationale for developing them?
2. Provide a complete list of known/established Never Events?
3. Select three of the Never Events that are of interest to you and (very) briefly explain how they might happen and what preventative actions can be taken to avoid them?
4. Please provide national data (annual if possible) that can help us better understand the prevalence of these events.

Question 4: In support of its mission to improve the quality of health care provided to the public, the Joint Commission includes the review of organizations' activities in response to sentinel events in its accreditation process, including all full accreditation surveys and random unannounced surveys. Go to the Joint Commission’s website and study carefully and thoroughly their Root Cause Analysis (RCA) framework for analyzing sentinel events. Then, search for at least one example that illustrates an actual application of this framework (even if it’s a partial implementation). Once you study this implementation, please include the completed (or partial) table (responding to the 24 questions in the template, if available). Based on your review and analysis of this application, provide a paragraph or two that highlight your observations on this approach, including advantages, disadvantages, limitations, challenges, etc.

Question 5 [20 points]:
a) Please provide a 1-2 page comprehensive summary of the “Eating Soup with a Fork” keynote speech by Dr. Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). Once you are logged on to the IHI website, you can go to http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/AudioandVideo/Don-Berwick-National-ForumKeynote-2007.aspx to view the video (or available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70eQKaZ5Bhs&t=112s)
b) Please write a paragraph or two to summarize your personal reflections/thoughts after listening to the speech.