Greek Health Center
Joel Allison is president and chief executive officer of Baylor Health Care System (BHCS), Dallas. His primary responsibility is to help Baylor attain its vision "to be trusted as the best place to give and receive safe, quality, compassionate care."
To do so, Mr. Allison continues developing Baylor as a patient-focused health care delivery system and clinical enterprise that offers prevention and wellness, physician, outpatient, acute hospital and other services that are geographically dispersed yet efficient and fully-coordinated. He maintains a focus on providing quality, safe patient care that can be measured and reported. He also places a renewed focus on medical education and health care research and continues to collaborate with physicians in the design and development of BHCS.
Mr. Allison's career includes almost three decades in health care management. He joined BHCS in 1993, and served as Baylor's senior executive vice president and chief operating officer before being promoted to president and CEO in 2000.
Mr. Allison received a bachelor's degree in journalism and religion at Baylor University in 1970 and attended Trinity University's health care administration program where he earned a master's degree in 1973. He is also a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School and in 2004 he received an Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Dallas Baptist University.
Mr. Allison is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Nationally, he serves on the Healthcare Leadership Council and the National Quality Forum, and he also is a member of the United Surgical Partners International board. In addition, he serves on numerous state and local boards; including VHA Texas, Texas Association of Voluntary Hospitals, Greater Dallas Chamber and United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.
Mr. Allison now answers questions from the Greek Health Center.
Baylor recently hired three C-suite level executives-a CMO, CNO and a CIO. In an interview, you recently said these hires were part of an overall plan to improve quality of care. Can you explain the plan in more detail? Why were these hires imperative to the plan?
BHCS is committed to excelling in four strategic areas: people; quality; service excellence; and stewardship. In 2000, our board of trustees passed a resolution to focus on quality of care. This required a system-wide clinical transformation aimed at enhancing patient care based upon six aims of the Institute of Medicine's 2001 report "Crossing the Quality Chasm." Clinical transformation will be complete in 2010 when, through a series of process changes and technology changes, all 14 Baylor hospitals will offer safe, patient-centered care that is effective, efficient, equitable and received in a timely manner.
In order to achieve this, we needed to hire a few new positions. A CMO was hired to align the physicians' interests, a CNO was hired to align the nurses' interests and a CIO was hired to integrate technology in order to provide superior care. The system already had a chief quality officer, chief safety officer and a director of health care improvement. All these individuals have a place on the "Best Care" committee which aligns the clinical transformation plans with Baylor's four strategic objectives mentioned above.
What quality improvement processes does Baylor have in place that will achieve better patient outcomes? What processes will improve operational performance? How do you reconcile these processes? What's the connection?
Baylor is investing $250 million in its clinical transformation effort to serve people, improve process and update technology. We are successful if we can improve our CMS core measures, Joint Commission standards and mortality rates. We also participate in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's initiatives (100K lives, 5 million lives). All quality improvement processes at Baylor focus on the six IOM aims-what we call S.T.E.E.E.P - Safe, Timely, Effective, Efficient, Equitable, Patient-centered care.
Baylor's culture is team oriented. Teams talk about best practices and those practices are spread around the system. This fall, we are hosting a quality summit, where teams from around the system are invited to submit a project. The projects will be judged based on Baylor's four strategic objectives and prizes will be awarded.
Quality -This word gets attached to everything in health care. What does quality in health care mean to hospitals? To individuals? To physicians and nurses?
Our quality of care continues to improve by measuring and focusing on the six IOM aims. One way Baylor will continue to be successful at providing great care is by working closely with physicians and nurses, implementing key technology that will enable our clinicians to provide better care and making sure that our approach is always patient-centered. Quality doesn't mean different things to different entities. It is about setting goals and holding people accountable for achieving those goals.
What tools and resources do you think are important to offer your employees in order to achieve quality health care?
We offer a program called ABC Baylor (Accelerating Best Care at Baylor), an innovative educational program for our health care leaders focused on health care quality improvement. To date, more than 500 employees have gone through the program. It was developed by our physician leaders and modeled after Intermountain Healthcare's program.
Goals are built into all our leader's incentive plans. Quality and patient safety goals account for 30 percent, service goals for 35 percent, financial goals for 25 percent and people goals for 10 percent. Each goal has measurable objectives, such as one-year retention rates in the people goals. Our goals and progress are transparent, available to all employees and the board of trustees.
Additionally, at every board meeting an update is given on our quality and clinical transformation effort. This focus on quality starts at the top and infiltrates every level throughout the organization. Senior leaders meet monthly for an update on the clinical transformation initiative. Three times a year there is a leadership development retreat where 1,000 leaders meet off-site for one day to discuss best practices in their departments. This hardwires our goals and initiatives within the organization. Everyone is on the same page. Everyone wants to achieve the same goals.
