Applying the Baldrige Criteria for Performance

Excellence to Talent Management

January 21, 2009

7 of 12

Bronson Methodist Hospital is the flagship of the Bronson System, with a 343-bed hospital in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan. They provide high quality care to over 1 million people throughout southwestern Michigan and offer the only Level I Trauma Center (having over 80,000 annual visits, the highest volume Emergency Department in the state). They are the largest downtown employer, with over 4,000 employees, 700 medical staff, and 400 volunteers, who bring their culture of excellence to life each day. Bronson Healthcare has grown by 41% in the past 5 years, and has plans underway to expand to over 400 beds in the near future.

Bronson Healthcare pursues their vision of being a national leader in health care, with a strategic management process in three areas, beginning with their core business: clinical excellence (with strategies for patient outcomes), corporate effectiveness (with targets for efficiency, growth, financial, and community benefit), and service excellence (with strategies for service excellence, staff competency and leadership).

Michele Serbenski, Vice President of Performance Excellence at Bronson Healthcare, said that the Baldrige Performance Criteria challenged them to think through how leaders lead as a process. Small discussion groups of Board members, leaders and physicians asked themselves “how they lead,” the results of which evolved to a formalized Bronson Leadership system, which the organization evaluates annually. Their formal leadership system enables Bronson to improve how they establish, communicate and deploy values and vision throughout the organization. The challenging question Michele recommended all organizations ask themselves is, “does your leadership structure explain how they lead as a process?”

7 of 12