Question #1: As you learned in your readings for week three, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award provides a set of criteria for organizational quality assessment and improvement that has been used by thousands of business, healthcare and educational organizations for more than a decade. What do you see as the greatest strength and greatest weakness of the Malcolm Balldrige National Qualty Award for assisting healthcare organizations in improving their quality of care. Is the criteria for this award just as applicable to small organizations as it is to large organizations?

Question #2: The Baldrige Award is given to healthcare organizations that apply and are judged to be outstanding in seven areas: (1) leadership, (2) strategic planning, (3) customer and market focus, (4) measurement, analysis and knowledge management, (5) human resource focus, (6) process management and (7) results. Which area do you believe would be the most challenging for the organization you work for, or if you don’t work in the healthcare field yet, which do you believe would be the most challenging. Please explain your answer.

Discussion Question #3: The reading by Agins et al, provides important considerations for defining high quality organizations. What do you believe are the two most important traits of a high performing healthcare organization and why?

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