Use of the Baldrige Framework by the Tennessee Department of Health

摘要

The societal responsibility of the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) is to protect, promote, and improve the health of people who live, work, and play in the state. In 2011, Tennessee recorded poor state health rankings as influenced by causes of morbidity and mortality. The Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) leadership highlighted this problem by choosing tobacco as one of the big four public health issues (tobacco use, obesity, physical inactivity, and substance abuse) that lead to excess mortality and healthcare costs in the state. To address those expectations, new leaders developed a multi-year plan to adopt, diffuse, and integrate the Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence framework (Baldrige) and its quality principles in 2012 across work systems and processes (see Figure 1). This gave the department the impetus to embrace broad systems changes by transforming its efforts to focus action toward greater preventive, community services.