Methodist Healthcare to receive Texas Award for Performance Excellence from Quality Texas Foundation

Methodist Healthcare has been selected to receive the Texas Award for Performance Excellence (TAPE) from the Quality Texas Foundation, representing the highest level of quality an organization can achieve in the state of Texas. Methodist Healthcare is the first and only health care system in South Texas and the third organization in San Antonio to receive the TAPE award since the inception of the award in 1994.

Utilizing the same criteria and process as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Texas Award for Performance Excellence is an annual recognition of Texas organizations that have achieved performance excellence and have applied outstanding quality principles in their day-to-day operations. TAPE winners are role model organizations demonstrating exceptional performance in all areas of organizational management - leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, operations focus and results. 

"This award is a validation of the hard work our employees, physicians, volunteers and board members have accomplished over the past years in Methodist Healthcare's journey to excellence," stated Jaime Wesolowski, President and CEO, Methodist Healthcare. "Our commitment to quality and process improvement enables us to provide better service and outcomes to our patients and that is what drives us to be nothing less than excellent," continued Wesolowski.

There are many milestones the health system has achieved in its journey; a few quality indicators the system excels in are:

• Evidenced Based Care Measures (Composite Core Measures) are in the top 10 percent of the nation, for those care interventions known to improve patient mortality and complications.
• The Methodist Healthcare in-hospital mortality is only 50 percent of what is expected given the severity of illness levels of Methodist patients. For Methodist this translates into 530 fewer patients dying each year than should be expected.
• The Patient Safety Indicator (PSI) 90 is a composite score of several in-hospital patient complications. Methodist Healthcare scores significantly lower (better) at 0.46 than the national average of 0.6, indicating a much lower hospital complication rate than most hospitals.

State examiners from the TAPE Baldrige-based program visited Methodist Healthcare hospitals in January to evaluate how well employees, physicians, volunteers and board members demonstrate and standardize excellence across the system. Methodist will receive a detailed report from Quality Texas Foundation on the health system's strengths and opportunities for improvement. Methodist staff will use the report to prepare for the national Baldrige process as part of the System's continuing pursuit of excellence.

Methodist Healthcare will receive the award at the Texas Quest for Excellence Conference on June 23, in Addison, Texas.