Start with a master plan
When Murphy took the helm at Sharp in 1996, he found a
health care organization in the midst of a huge financial crisis.
After succeeding in turning the organization around, Murphy
says the timing was finally right to get serious about quality at
Sharp HealthCare.
“We had just been through some very challenging times,”
Murphy says. “It was 1999, and for my first three years in the
job, all my efforts had been focused on making financial
improvements. Now, it was finally time to look at strategic
planning and where we could go from here. The strategic plan
is a vital component to launching a quality initiative because
all of your improvement activities need to be focused around
achieving your organization’s vision and goals.”
Murphy had his eye on the Malcolm Baldrige award from the
outset and created a new vision for the organization that doubled as a quality master plan.
The Baldrige award is given annually by the president of
the United States to businesses that are judged to be outstanding in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; human resource focus; process management; and results.
Murphy named his plan “The Sharp Experience.” The plan
featured six pillars of excellence: quality, service, people,
finance, growth and community, which mirror the seven evaluation criteria for the Baldrige award.
The plan became the center of Sharp’s quality improvement
universe around which all improvement projects orbited.
Murphy employed a number of different quality improvement
methodologies, some concurrently, including the Baldrige and
Lean Six Sigma processes. Keeping the plan at the center of all
quality improvement activities eliminated confusion among
Sharp’s employees and also provided focus for the organization.
“I used multiple quality improvement methodologies
because each system offers its own unique structure for evaluating your current processes, identifying performance gaps
and creating solutions,” Murphy says. “So looking at our
operation through each system’s criteria took us to a higher
performance level. As a CEO, if you use different quality
processes, you have to be careful that the different processes
aren’t in conflict with each other. The way to avoid conflict or
duplicity is to tie everything back to your company’s specific
improvement plan.
“If a review of any area of your current operation using a different quality evaluation process suggests that improvements
are still needed, that change will take you further toward your
overall vision, so it brings value.”