Hardwiring Excellence:
Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference Quint Studer
Softcover: 280 pages
ISBN 0974998605
Fire Starter Publishing
March 2004 (click the button below for the very best available price)
How do you take your organization
to the next level?
''Quint Studer's 'Nine Principles of
Service and Operational
Excellence' provide the missing link between people power
and strong financials. It's about courageous leadership.''
Richard L. Clarke, FHFMA, President & CEO, Healthcare Financial
Management Association
In this book recommended by the
American Hospital Association, Quint Studer helps health care
professionals to rekindle the flame and offers a road map to
creating and sustaining a Culture of Service and Operational
Excellence that drives bottom-line results. Learn tools, tips, and techniques to
hardwire key behaviors as expressed by the Nine Principles to:
Increase employee, physician,
and patient satisfaction;
Lower employee turnover;
Improve quality;
Grow market share; and,
Increase revenue while reducing
costs.
As the results occur, momentum
builds, and makes health care a better place for patients to receive
care, employees to work and physicians to practice medicine. The Nine Principles described in this
book are:
Commit to Excellence - It
all starts with a firm and measurable commitment to excellence.
What is excellence really? Excellence is when employees feel
valued, physicians feel the organization is the best, and
patients feel the service is extraordinary. A commitment to
excellence impacts the bottom line while living out the mission
and values of the organization. It creates alignment for your
staff and leaders while putting the "why" into health care.
Measure the Important Things
- In order to achieve excellence, an organization needs to be
able to objectively assess its current status as well as
progress. Principle #2 helps an organization define specific
targets and measurable tools, and align the necessary resources
to hit those targets.
Build a Culture Around
Service - All successful change requires well thought-out
processes and procedures that must become the norm or be
hardwired into the organization. This principle teaches how to
connect services to organizational values - script behaviors,
create teams, teach service recovery, and develop standards of
performance. There is no higher responsibility than to ensure
high quality and a caring environment for our patients.
Create and Develop Leaders
- Leadership is crucial to sustaining a culture of
organizational excellence. This principle teaches how to
identify current and future leaders and then how to develop,
train, and equip those leaders in a cost-effective manner.
Focus on Employee
Satisfaction - The saying "A chain is only as strong as its
weakest link," holds true within every organization. Every
employee is critical to the success of an organization.
Satisfied employees do a better job. It's that simple. This
principle shows how an organization, by focusing on employee
satisfaction, can improve patient and physician satisfaction
while decreasing costs. Build a better workforce!
Build Individual
Accountability - What if your staff acted like owners
instead of renters? Principle #6 teaches how to create a
self-motivated workforce. It's amazing what your staff will do
when they feel ownership and alignment with an organization.
Align Behaviors with Goals
and Values - Organizations are shown how to create and
implement objective, measurable evaluation systems that are tied
to the Five Pillars. Leadership report cards and 90-day action
plans are used to support the evaluation system, and align
leadership and resources in an organization.
Communicate at all Levels
- This principle, often referred to as "Managing Up," can work
magic in an organization. Change occurs when all leaders are
aligned, and everyone understands what is important, and what
they need to do to help accomplish organizational goals. This
method speeds up the decision process, creates proactive
behavior, and improves working relationships. Organizations who
apply this principle will find that "administration" is often
viewed in a more positive manner.
Recognize and Reward Success
- Everyone makes a difference! Start creating legends in your
organization. A legend is an example of those who live the
organizational values. By creating legends we establish real
life examples for others to follow. Create win-win-wins for your
staff. Never let great work go unnoticed!
As an impetus over the past several
years for many health care organizations returning to their roots,
Quint Studer not only coaches organizations about creating a culture
of excellence but has also done it. Over his 20-year career in
health care, Quint moved from the staff level all the way to being
COO of Holy Cross Hospital, in Chicago, from 1993-1996 and President
of Baptist Hospital, Inc. (Baptist and Gulf Breeze Hospital in
Pensacola, FL) from 1996-2000. In March 1999, Inc. Magazine named
Quint its Master of Business, the only health care leader to ever
receive this distinction. To quote Inc. magazine, “We were skeptical
of those advocating cultural change within an organization. Studer
has refined a system over the years and brought it to a point where
it’s replicable not only in other hospitals but in any service
business.”
