Lean Blog Interviews

My guest for episode #218 is Karen Kiel-Rosser, Vice President/Quality Improvement Officer at Mary Greeley Medical Center in Iowa. You can see her full bio below in this post. You might remember Karen from a recent post where she told a great story about putting patient safety first. We're talking today about the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and how that framework and process is mutually supportive of Lean and quality improvement. In December, Mary Greeley Medical Center was named a recipient of Gold level recognition in the 2014 Iowa Recognition for Performance Excellence (IRPE) program - the state level Baldrige award. They previously received the Silver level in 2011. In the podcast, we talk about why and when Mary Greeley decided to pursue the Baldrige award, what it was like to be reviewed at the state level, and their future plans for applying at the national level. Karen also shares thoughts about how Baldrige ("the what") and Lean ("the how") fit together, some of their key quality outcomes