Renewed Mission

Wright Medical Center's financial picture started to stabilize with its conversion to critical-access status roughly six years ago. The same could not be said, however, for the hospital's work environment and senior leadership. "We were very reactive and putting out a lot of fires. It wasn't a real pleasant place to work," says Chief Executive Officer Steven J. Simonin.

At that time, the Clarion, IA-based hospital's patient satisfaction ranked around the 50th percentile in the nation. The organization had high employee turnover, and its growth rate was about 3 percent. So in 2001, the senior leadership team embarked on a mission to transform the hospital into the best place for patients to receive care, employees to work and physicians to practice. The goal: to become the area's best primary healthcare provider by 2006.

First on the agenda was looking at healthcare from a new perspective. In rural areas, providers have a mission to take care of their community--their friends and family, Simonin says. "We talked from a leadership standpoint that it is not about financials; financials will happen if we provide the best service and quality."

Rather than spending 60 percent of their time focusing on the hospital's finances, senior leaders identified five areas central to the hospital's new perspective--service, quality, people, growth and financials--and now devote an equal amount of time to each category. The hospital's leadership also realized for this process to work, it depended on every employee. "We felt we needed to put a strong accountability factor in," says Simonin, "we're talking from the frontline housekeeper all the way to the CEO."

To align the staff around the same goals, each of the five pillar committees includes representatives from every hospital department and is headed up by a member of the senior leadership team. The agendas are driven by the employees with the senior leaders guiding the process, Simonin explains. Each employee is expected to submit a "bright idea," which can be anything to improve service or quality or growth or finances. These ideas are tied to employee evaluations, as well. Rather than give employees the same standard pay raise each year regardless of their performance, the 25-staffed-bed hospital ties annual raises directly to employee evaluations, which are based on standards of behavior, departmental results, personal objective results and facility results. "When our housekeeper is concerned about accounts receivable, it's because one-fourth of his evaluation is based upon hospital goals, and AR is part of that," says Simonin.

Wright Medical's renewed focus has earned it the Press Ganey Summit Award in 2006 for the highest inpatient satisfaction for the past three years running (99 percent). It also ranked in the top 2 percent nationwide for employee satisfaction, and its operating margin increased from approximately .5 percent in 2000 to 5.5 percent in 2007. Wright Medical now has its sights set on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Simonin's advice: "It is all about accountability, communication and dealing with your low performers. The other thing is, don't be afraid. There are a lot of risk averse leaders out there. Typically in the rural areas, we defer to bigger hospitals to set our direction, and that is unfortunate because we have a lot of unique opportunities that don't arise in the bigger towns."

--Carrie Vaughan