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Bronson Methodist Hospital
Quality of Workplace
Employees at Bronson Methodist Hospital know they are working at one of the
best places in the country and they just don’t leave. At a time when there is a chronic
shortage of registered nurses, Bronson has an RN turnover of just 4.7 percent and a RN
vacancy rate of just 5.3 percent. Overall employee turnover was 5.6 percent in 2005. For
three years in a row, Bronson has been listed among the “100 Best Companies to Work
For” by Fortune magazine (2004, 2005, and 2006), and among the “100 Best Companies
for Working Mothers” by Working Mother magazine (2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006). In
addition to its awards for workplace excellence, Bronson has received many other awards
for excellence including 2001 and 2005 Michigan Quality Leadership Awards, and most
recently, the 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), the nation’s
highest honor for performance excellence.
About the Hospital
Bronson was founded in 1900 and is located on a 28-acre urban campus in
Kalamazoo, Michigan. Bronson is the largest downtown employer in Kalamazoo. It is
the 343 bed flagship organization of the Bronson Healthcare Group, a not-for-profit
healthcare organization serving a 9 county region. The hospital consists of over 3,200
employees and 780 medical staff. The hospital manages almost 80,000 emergency visits
and 21,000 admitted patients each year. Bronson includes the only Level I trauma center
in its service area, a high-risk pregnancy center, a Level III neonatal intensive care unit
(NICU), an accredited Chest Pain Center, and a primary stroke center certified by the
Joint Commission on Accreditation for Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).1
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Bronson—Before the Change
During the mid-1990s, the Bronson vision was to be known as the system of
choice in the region. The Bronson culture was built around trying to do the right things
for their patients and there was a competitive fire to be better than the competition.
While Bronson was a very good organization, a number of performance indicators had a
declining trend. Bronson had a moderate image in the community, profitable but
declining market share (second to the major competitor in their market), poor human
resource practices with high union vulnerability, high turnover rate, and employee
surveys told them they also had weak leadership. According to Michele Serbenski,
Bronson Executive Director, Corporate Effectiveness and Customer Satisfaction, it was a
time to invest in leadership. We weren’t consistent in the administration of our policies
or leadership processes. Our low scores on the employee opinion surveys supported
this.” The vulnerability to unionization was perceived to be a significant threat.
Unionization “is going to change our world and you people won’t even know what you
are going to deal with. You don’t want that.” said Susan Ulshafer, recently retired
Bronson Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Organizational Development.
The Transformation
Frank Sardone, Bronson CEO, began pushing Bronson to “raise the bar”—a
phrase that became his mantra. The leadership team focused on a two-pronged approach:
1) What are we going to do about leadership in the workplace to make Bronson a
great place to work?
2) If people want to work here and they are happy, how can we get them to
provide the best possible service to our customers?
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Frank and Susan along with the rest of the senior leadership team resolved to do
something about this and became champions for the process.
Planning was underway for construction of a $200 million campus redevelopment
project adjacent to the existing downtown hospital. The New Bronson was designed to
create a state-of-the-art, easily accessible healthcare campus with all private patient
rooms. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Bronson. According to Serbenski,
we asked ourselves “Do we want to move into this (new) building which will be beautiful
and not have the culture match the architecture? This has to be more than bricks and
mortar. We have to change how we are as a workforce and the culture to support this.”
So the campus redevelopment project sparked the first of several improvement platforms
to focus on the workforce and service excellence at Bronson.
After confronting the brutal facts, Bronson decided on a four-step strategic
transformation process:
1)
Raising workforce engagement to the strategic level
2)
Creating the workforce development plan
3)
Focusing on leadership
4)
Seeking employee buy-in and using employee feedback
All of this was tied together with measurement. The workforce development plan
became a key element to support Bronson’s corporate strategy related to Customer and
Service Excellence. The plan to improve and invest in the workforce was presented to
the Board of Directors as a way to better engage the workforce so that they could provide
better service to customers. The plan was approved by the Board of Directors without
difficulty, and Susan began making quarterly presentations to the Board. The
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presentations included changes that had been made and measurement data to show the
effectiveness of the changes. From the beginning it was a strategic effort with the Board
and senior leadership team fully engaged in the process and responding with the
resources needed to accomplish the transformation.
Early in the process, representatives from Bronson visited and networked with
other organizations recognized for service and workforce excellence, such as The Walt
Disney Company and Ritz-Carlton Hotels, to learn first-hand how they did things.
Bronson also obtained and began studying the applications of Baldrige award winning
organizations from the healthcare industry as well as outside healthcare.
What can a hospital possibly learn from a company that runs theme parks or a
company that runs hotels? The key learnings related to culture, leadership, standards and
accountability. Disney and Ritz-Carlton created a culture focused on service excellence.
They had strong leadership, clear performance standards, and held staff accountable to
these standards. Bronson created its own interpretation of this philosophy which became
part of the Bronson Plan for Excellence. “…every day, every interaction, every
customer, Bronson employees are personally accountable to…create a great memorable
experience.” With these great ideas gleaned from other high performing organizations,
Bronson had its roadmap to service excellence.
Along Came Baldrige
In 1999, Susan Ulshafer, Senior V.P. of Human Resources and Organizational
Development, obtained a copy of the MBNQA Criteria for Healthcare. She showed it to
Frank Sardone, CEO, who reviewed the Baldrige core values and said “If this supports
our pursuit of excellence then let’s do it.” So, Bronson decided to use the MBNQA as
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the leadership framework for its quality journey to excellence. By 2005 the Baldrige
framework was fully integrated into the organizational culture and management
processes. The MBNQA Criteria “really helped us connect the dots. Baldrige helped us
to fit the workforce development plan into the right place in our structure so that it was
not a separate thing that HR did, but part of our strategy. We didn’t realize the connectthe-dots alignment with leaders’ goals and employees’ goals and all the rest until we
adopted Baldrige.”
The first response from the Board when Sardone shared the new vision to be a
national leader in healthcare quality was somewhat pessimistic. Sardone replied “The
people of southwest Michigan deserve healthcare that is the best in the nation. They
should not have to leave Kalamazoo to receive high quality care and service. It is our
vision to be a national leader in healthcare quality.” The Board bought in.
The Bronson Way
What makes Bronson best-in-class in workplace excellence? The answer to that
question begins with the Plan for Excellence shown in Figure 1. The mission is the
foundation of the plan while the vision provides direction for the organization. The
bottom three components of the plan comprise the guiding principles for Bronson:
Philosophy of Nursing Excellence, Values, and Commitment to Patient Care Excellence.
The top three components of the pyramid, known as the 3-Cs, comprise the corporate
strategies for Bronson: Clinical Excellence, Customer & Service Excellence, and
Corporate Effectiveness.
The Plan for Excellence is provided to each employee in a convenient, one-page
format and is reviewed with each employee annually. The purpose of this review is to
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insure that each employee takes personal accountability “every day, with every
interaction, with every customer.” The reverse side of the form (Figure 2) outlines this
accountability to deliver high-quality care and excellent service. The one-page Plan for
Excellence was just the start of the communication process with employees. The
communication process incorporated lots of different forms of internal communications
and it was an assignment for leaders to discuss it with their employees. Administrators
would ask employees about the 3 Cs and why they were important to them. Finally it
clicked and the employees understood and felt part of what we are trying to accomplish at
Bronson.
All employees are expected to buy-in to the culture and link what they do in the
performance of their duties to the 3-Cs—and they do. Stop by Bronson and ask any
employee for directions. The campus is a bit confusing to navigate. The most likely
response by the employee is “Let me take you there.”
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Figure 1.
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Figure 2.
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The Workforce Development Plan
The Workforce Development Plan (WDP) comprises Bronson’s systematic
approach to attracting and retaining qualified staff and its commitment to workforce
excellence. “The WDP includes innovative strategies related to current workforce needs
to ensure that Bronson maintains its status as one of the nation’s best employers.”2 It also
addresses the strategic challenges associated with future workforce needs. The WDP is
comprised of 7 interrelated initiatives as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Workforce Development Plan
Developing the Current Workforce

Leadership Development

Career Enhancement

Succession Planning

Retention
Diversity

Diversity Strategic Plan

Diversity Council

Mentor Program
Developing the Future Workforce

Partnerships with Schools &
Communities

Youth Strategies

Recruitment
WORKFORCE
DEVELOPMENT
PLAN
Benefits & Services

Your Life; Your Time

Your Wealth & Financial Security

Your Professional Development

Your Health & Wellness
Employee Satisfaction & Well-being

Two-way Communication

Employee Input

Listening Posts

Workplace Health & Safety
Staff Learning & Motivation

Education & Training Plan

Career Development

Knowledge & Skill Sharing
Recognizing & Rewarding Excellence

Competitive Compensation

Formal & Informal Rewards
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Current Workforce. The key to Bronson’s commitment to current workforce
excellence is its investment in leadership. The Bronson leadership initiative
(LEADERship) provides training to the hospital’s approximately 225 leaders through a
series of 2 day training programs held 3 times a year. One resource Bronson uses in its
leadership training is the book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the
Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins.
The Bronson Leadership System (BLS), shown in Figure 4, was developed as a
combination of several best practices. The BLS is the tool used by the Board of Directors
and the executive team to systematically establish, communicate and deploy the Bronson
mission, values, and vision.
Figure 4. Bronson Leadership System
The Bronson Leadership System is the top level of the Staff Performance
Management System (SPMS), shown in Figure 5. The SPMS supports Bronson’s
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expectations of high performance work by all staff and “is the primary mechanism for the
achievement of action plans.”3 The SPMS is a comprehensive plan that moves from
strategic planning, to deployment by translating the strategic plans into performance
requirements, development of minimum working requirements and job standards,
through setting and mid-year monitoring of goals for leaders and employees and
providing education and training to provide knowledge and skills to achieve the goals.
Corrective action planning is included as well as planning for rewards and recognition
that are tied to organizational strategy. The SPMS concludes with individual
performance evaluation which is a two-way communication process between the
employee and the executive team. The overall effectiveness of the SPMS is
communicated within the organization using the three Cs communication format.
Bronson recognizes that excellence is the result of continuous improvement and
has selected the Deming Cycle, Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), as its continuous
improvement model. Continuous improvement of the SPMS is accomplished through the
use of PDCA.
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Sidebar
Plan-Do-Check-Act was actually developed by Walter Shewhart and endorsed by W.
Edwards Deming. PDCA represents a spiral of actions taken to continuously improve
processes. In the Planning step, the process is studied to determine changes that be made
to improve performance. A team is formed to address information requirements, tests
that might need to be conducted to generate needed data, and plans for obtaining that
data. In the Do step, improvement ideas are tested on a pilot scale. In the Check step,
data generated during the Do step are analyzed to determine the effects of the ideas on the
process. In the Act step the results are thoroughly analyzed to determine what was
learned from the tests. If the results were favorable and no unexpected side effects are
observed, the new process is implemented. Because there is always room for further
improvement in a process, the PDSA cycle can then be applied to the new process to
create further improvement.
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Figure 5. Bronson Staff Performance Management System4
Future Workforce. The key to Bronson’s commitment to future workforce
development is necessitated in part by its location. Bronson is located in Kalamazoo, MI,
a small metropolitan area of about 240,000 residents an hour away from Grand Rapids.
There are 3 hospitals in Kalamazoo County and the workforce is reasonably steady. The
pool of qualified health care professionals is relatively small and in demand. During the
mid-1990s, Bronson provided support and funding for the establishment of the Bronson
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School of Nursing at Western Michigan University, located close to the hospital, in order
to increase the number of Registered Nurses in the area.
To build the future workforce, Bronson has embarked on three youth initiatives to
encourage Kalamazoo youth to consider careers in health care. There are camps hosted
by the hospital to expose 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders to career opportunities in health care.
Lock-ins are held in the athletic club for 7th and 8th graders where they learn about health
care careers. A health careers job fair is hosted for high school seniors. In addition,
Bronson works closely with high school counselors to promote careers in health care.
In addition, current employees are afforded the opportunity to advance from staff
level to new positions. The Respiratory Care Career Development Program provides a
guided pathway for current employees to become respiratory therapists. During their
participation in the program, employees receive full-time benefits, full payment for
tuition and books, and a 24-hour per day period stipend while attending classes full time.
Upon graduation the employee has a one-year minimum obligation to remain at Bronson.
This program has resulted in a 0 percent vacancy rate in respiratory therapy at Bronson.
Employee Satisfaction and Well-Being. Employee satisfaction is regularly
assessed through a variety of formal and informal means. The annual employee opinion
survey (EOS) is the primary formal mechanism to assess staff satisfaction on 16 separate
dimensions. The participation rate for the EOS was 93% in 2006. EOS results document
continuous improvement since 2001 in most of the 16 dimensions and Bronson achieved
best practice performance on 39% of all questions asked on the survey. Among the
highlights from the EOS is the high confidence on the part of the staff that the
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administration will use the EOS results for improvement. In addition to the coded
responses to the EOS, the administration notes carefully all written comments.
It was in the area of two-way communication that Bronson determined the
importance of focusing on leadership. The EOS in the late 1990s said that leadership was
poor and pay policy and benefits weren’t the greatest. During this time Sardone
conducted quarterly Employee Forums where the CEO would talk about what was going
on. Attendance was good, but people were coming to vent. They complained about
everything: “Parking stinks.” “Pay stinks.” “Blah, blah, blah.” It was a packed house,
and it was at a time when they had high union vulnerability, so they came to complain.
Sardone held CEO Office Hours where employees could stop in and talk individually to
the CEO.
So, Bronson began investing in leaders. As they became stronger and better
armed with information, fewer and fewer employees attended the employee forums.
They didn’t need to hear from the CEO in a big meeting because they already knew “the
scoop.” They knew that their leaders were listening to them and taking action based on
their input. They knew that they can see Frank in the hallway or during office hours—
but they no longer needed to do that. Bronson needed to let go of some old things, like
the employee forums, that they no longer needed.
Staff Learning and Motivation. All jobs have a job description designed around
core competencies and which specify the qualifications and skills required as well as
organization expectations and values. Leadership is the biggest area where training is
conducted. Bronson LEADERship training is conducted three times each year and
“lunch and learn sessions” are conducted between the training sessions. Staff are
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encouraged to take advantage of targeted population programs to develop skills necessary
to qualify for another position in the hospital. Preceptorships, internships, externships,
and scholarships also are used in staff development and learning.
Recognizing and Rewarding Excellence. Bronson pays competitive salaries,
but not the highest salaries in the area. Says Serbenski, Bronson “is not at the top of the
pay scale. We tend to sort of be in the happy middle. We have pressure because our
nearest competitor is a union environment and they negotiate a new contract every couple
of years, so we wait to see what the new contract says. We truly believe that people are
not going to leave Bronson just because of pay. That’s only one piece of the equation for
us. We’d love it if we had the money to be able to always be at the top of the heap…but
we don’t. That has not been our rule to live by, because we have other things like a
variety of benefits and services.”
Employee recognition and reward mechanisms are built into the system.
Recognition and rewards take many forms as shown in Figure 6. The celebrations, which
are tied to achievement of goals, are especially important. Sr. VP of HR Ulshafer would
always announce these events with much fanfare and the promise of fabulous prizes.
Everyone knew that the fabulous prizes were inexpensive “trinkets and trash,” but they
sent a powerful message that achievement of goals is recognized and appreciated.
Leaders have a Leader Recognition Toolbox that contains Bronson Bucks, which can be
used on campus, movie tickets, and logo items which they can award to employees on the
spot.
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Figure 6. Recognition and Reward System
(Bronson Methodist Hospital, 2005, p.20)










Thank you notes
On the spot recognition
Leader recognition toolbox
Celebrations (tied to goal achievement) & fabulous prizes
Hospital Week, Nurses’ Week, Employee Appreciation
Annual events: picnic, holiday banquet, children’s holiday party
Service awards and annual recognition banquet
Nursing Excellence Awards
President’s Team Awards
Bonuses (gainshare, key contributor, productivity, preceptor,
certification/advanced degree completion)
Gainsharing had been around at Bronson since the early 1990s, but it wasn’t the
gainsharing of today. It started out as a measure to improve patient satisfaction. It was
awarded once a year, so employees often forgot what they were being rewarded for. The
first improvement was to move to a quarterly payout. The big improvement came when
gain sharing was expanded beyond just patient satisfaction to include measures for all
three Cs. Each C is a separate, equally weighted target. Currently, full-time employees
are eligible for a quarterly gainshare award up to $100 for each target—for a total of $300
if all three goals are achieved.
Gainsharing is based on department-level goals. At an individual level, each
employee, in conjunction with their boss, is asked to create their own personal goals—
how what they do every day contributes to each strategy. They record these goals on a
green card, called a badge buddy because it fits behind their identification badge. It took
time and additional feedback and communication to help employees that these were more
than personal development goals. Some new ways of thinking were required.
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Environmental services personnel, for example, had to think about how they support
clinical excellence in what they do every day. One answer was that they support clinical
excellence by washing their hands every time they enter or leave a patient’s room
because that helps stop the spread of germs.
Figure 7. Green Card
Benefits and Services. In addition to the usual insurance, vacation, and holiday
benefits, Bronson has other benefits that set them apart from the ordinary employer.
Some of these benefits are the result of employee suggestions. One of these is free valet
parking for employees who are in their third trimester of pregnancy—the Baby on the
Way Valet Service. Valet parking was already available to patients for a fee. An
employee named Rosetta submitted an idea to leverage that existing resource to relieve
pregnant employees from the long walk from employee parking. One result of this has
been that pregnant employees can now work longer into their pregnancy.
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Figure 8. Bronson Baby On The Way Valet Service
Another benefit is Concierge Services available to employees. The Concierge
Office is located off the atrium in the hospital (see Figure 9). Employees may request a
variety of services which the concierge will perform. These include picking up dry
cleaning, taking vehicles for servicing, ordering flowers, gift wrapping, movie passes,
travel planning, and alterations. All services are provided at cost—and no tipping is
allowed.
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Figure 9. BRONSON Concierge Services Office
Diversity. Diversity has been an opportunity at Bronson. This part of the WDP
considers diversity in its broadest sense. According to Serbenski, “It is not just about
skin color and ethnicity—it’s more than that. Those are the ways we can easily measure
diversity. We have a multi-year diversity strategic plan that is part of our WDP. We
have hired a Diversity Liaison reporting directly to the VP of HR who reports to the
CEO. We have a Diversity Council, co-chaired by the CEO and VP of HR, which helps
us move forward in diversity awareness, education, planning, and strategy. We are doing
everything we can to recruit minorities to health careers. We currently have a program to
identify minority staff employees for leadership training and participation in the
Leadership Mentor Program.”
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Physician Involvement
Sometimes physicians can be among the most difficult to involve in improvement
programs. This was not the case at Bronson. At Bronson, hospital-driven performance
improvements and success created interest among physicians and resulted in the
emergence of physician-driven performance improvements. According to CEO Sardone,
“They saw us ‘walking the talk’ about our having only one true customer: the patients
and their families.” Physicians became more involved and provided leadership for
programs such as ones to decrease ventilator acquired pneumonia, decrease waiting times
in the Emergency Department and to decrease central line infections. These physiciandriven programs resulted in greater efficiency and improved clinical outcomes. Physician
satisfaction increased as turnover of professional staff decreased. Physicians are included
on the Strategic Oversight Teams along with every executive in the hospital.
Bronson has 100% adoption of its information systems (IT) by physicians and
reports 85.6% physician satisfaction with IT which puts them in the 99th percentile
nationally. How are they able to achieve this? Currently, Bronson is introducing a new
Computerized Physician Order Entry system (CPOE). Before the go-live date, the
Information Technology Department set up computers in the lobby that contained an
operational version of the new system. Staffers were available all day for one-on-one
training and to answer any questions. This set up is called a Petting Zoo. Physicians and
other users were encouraged to try the new system—“Kick the tires,” as VP/CIO Mac
McClurkan puts it—before the system is introduced. Participation was encouraged by
giving everyone who attended the Petting Zoo an opportunity to win a pair of tickets to
the Michigan-Michigan State football game.
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Bronson provides a conveniently located Physicians Service Center near the
Physician’s Dining Room, Medical Records, and Concierge Services. This Center
handles recruiting of physicians, they coordinate human resource and service functions,
provide new-physician orientation and training, work with physicians’ offices to insure
that they have a seamless IT connection to the hospital. This center also facilitates the
physician satisfaction survey.
Impact on Bronson
As a result of its Journey to Excellence, Bronson is flourishing. The
improvements in quality have a measurable payback to the organization. Since 2000,
Bronson’s market share in Cardiac Services has consistently increased. In 2005, they had
the dominant market share in their market for the first time with overall inpatient
satisfaction scores in the 90th percentile nationally. Bronson estimates that it costs
between $30 to $60 thousand to replace an RN. RN turnover rate at about one third of
the national average and about half a national benchmark creates a significant cost
advantage for BRONSON.
The CEO Talks About Lessons Learned, Opportunities, and Resources
Lessons Learned. CEO Frank Sardone can cite many lessons Bronson has
learned from its journey to excellence.

Chief among these is that commitment must start at the top. Without top
management involvement and commitment it will be a short and ineffective
journey. A stable executive team is also essential to the process.
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You don’t need additional silos of resources in order in order to accomplish the
journey. You must integrate the improvement activities into the work itself. It
cannot be an “add-on” activity.

“Culture eats strategy for lunch!” Strategic plans cannot be enacted unless the
entire workforce is engaged. Top management cannot do it alone.

You must make sure that all employees understand how the work they do
contributes to the attainment of the organization’s vision. In Sardone’s words, “It
(success) really boils down to the people.”
Opportunities. CEO Sardone also remembers several major opportunities along the
way. According to Serbenski, “We don’t have challenges or stumbling points at
Bronson. We have opportunities.”

How do you make the MBNQA part of what we do? This was a difficult issue for
Bronson. After several applications, Bronson decided not to reapply for the
Baldrige Award in 2004. Instead, they used this year to address this stumbling
point and prepare for their ultimately successful 2005 application.

Building the New Bronson was a major opportunity in the 1990s.
Key Resources. Throughout the process of determining key resources needed to
accomplish the transformation, one constant was to leverage the power of leaders. Few
additional resources were required.

Greeters were added so that nurses don’t have to do this. This frees up time for
clinical professionals to focus on patients.
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What’s Next for Bronson?
“We are pleased to receive the MBNQA and serve as role models, but that
doesn’t mean we are perfect. There are lots of things we didn’t do well the first time,
figured out later, still haven’t figured out. Our new goal is to win the MBNQA again in
2011—the earliest time that we are eligible to apply.” – Michele Serbenski.
Measures of Best-In-Class Performance
Among the output measures that document Bronson’s best-in-class performance
in quality of workplace are:
Turnover Rate (2005)
5.6% overall vs national average ~19%
4.7% for Registered Nurses vs national average ~18%
Job Vacancy Rate
5.3% overall vs national average ~9%
5% for Registered Nurses vs 10.6% ANCC best practice comparison
Overall Staff Satisfaction
90% of employees rated BRONSON as a “great place to work” vs 87% for
all Fortune Best 100 companies on Great Place to Work Trust
Index
Top 10% for physician satisfaction in survey by Professional Research
Consultants.
100 Best Companies for Working Mothers by Working Mother magazine
in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006.
100 Best Companies to Work For by Fortune magazine in 2004, 2005, and
2006.
Patient Satisfaction
Considered “excellent” in “top box” patient satisfaction scores by Gallup.
Inpatient satisfaction in 90th percentile by Gallup.
Outpatient surgery patient satisfaction in 95th percentile by Gallup.
Michigan Quality Leadership Award in 2001 and 2005.
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2005.
100 Top Hospitals® by Solucient in 2005.
American Hospital Association—McKesson Quest for Quality Citation of Merit
in 2006.
Governor’s Award of Excellence for Improving Care in the Hospital Setting in
2004 and 2005.
Consumer Choice Award 2002-2005.
Kalamazoo’s Leading Hospital 1998-2005.
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References
1.
NIST. “2005 Award Winner,” 2005.
2.
Bronson Methodist Hospital. “2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Application Summary,” 2005, p. 18.
3.
Bronson Methodist Hospital. “2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Application Summary,” 2005, p. 19.
4.
Bronson Methodist Hospital. “2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Application Summary,” 2005, p. 19.
5.
Waterman, R. “The Seven Elements of Strategic Fit.” The Journal of Business
Strategy 2(3), Winter 1982, 287-293.
6.
Higgins, J. “The Eight ‘S’s of Successful Strategy Execution.” Journal of
Change Management 5(1), March 2005, 3-13.
Information Resources
Collins, J. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t,
Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2001.
http://corporate.disney.go.com/index.html The Walt Disney Company Home Page.
http://patapsco.nist.gov/eBaldrige/HealthCare_Profile.cfm E-Baldrige Self-Assessment
and Action Planning: Using The Baldrige Organizational Profile for Health Care.
http://www.Bronsonhealth.com/ Bronson Methodist Hospital Home Page.
http://www.kalamazoomi.com/ Kalamazoo, MI Home Page.
http://www.quality.nist.gov/ NIST Baldrige National Quality Award Home Page.
http://www.quality.nist.gov/HealthCare_Criteria.htm
Performance Excellence.
Baldrige Health Care Criteria for
http://www.ritzcarlton.com/ Ritz Carlton Hotels Home Page.
Lee, F. If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 ½ Things You Would Do Differently, Second
River Healthcare Press, Bozeman, MT, 2004.