Bronson Methodist Hospital
Founded in 1900, today Bronson Methodist Hospital (BMH) is a state-of-the-art, all-private room facility designed as a peaceful, healing environment with features such as an indoor garden atrium, complete with lush trees, plants, and bubbling water. Located on a 28-acre urban campus, BMH provides medical care for the nine-county region in southwest Michigan surrounding Kalamazoo, Mich. BMH is the flagship organization in the Bronson Healthcare Group. BMH’s 3,182 employees and 780 medical staff manage more than 77,000 emergency visits and 21,000 admitted patients each year while generating $751 million in gross patient revenues (65 percent inpatient and 35 percent outpatient).
BMH provides care in virtually every specialty: cardiology (Heart Hospital at Bronson), general surgical services, orthopedics, neurosciences, obstetrics (The Bronson Birthplace), pediatrics (The Children’s Hospital at Bronson), and adult critical care services. As a tertiary care center, BMH
includes a Level I trauma center, a high-risk pregnancy center, a Level III neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), the region’s only accredited Chest Pain Center, and a primary stroke center certified by the Joint Commission on Accreditation for Healthcare Organizations.
Highlights
- Patient satisfaction has improved from approximately 95 percent in 2002 to almost 97 percent in 2004. Since 2001, Arbor Associates has annually presented BMH with its Award for Highest Overall Patient Satisfaction.
- Medicare Mortality Rate decreased from 4.8 percent in 2002 to 3.5 percent for January-July 2005, performing better than the CareScience Expected Standard and the CareScience Best Practice.
- In 2004, 2005, and 2006, BMH was included in Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For; and in 2003, 2004, and 2005, BMH was among the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers identified by Working Mother Magazine.
- BMH received the Michigan Quality Leadership Award in 2005 and 2001.
The 3 CsExcellence is embedded in BMH’s culture and is the thread tying together its mission, “Provide excellent healthcare services,” its commitment to patient care, its philosophy of nursing, and its corporate strategies known as the “Three Cs”—Clinical Excellence, Corporate Effectiveness, and Customer and Service Excellence. BMH’s vision is to be a national leader in healthcare quality.
A one-page Plan for Excellence, distributed to all employees, captures the mission, vision, values, Three Cs, and Customer Service Standards and Expectations, which outlines the personal accountability that every staff member has every day, with every interaction, with every customer.
The plan is a constant reminder of the principles critical to BMH in delivering high-quality care and excellent service.
Over the past five years, BMH’s passion for excellence has led to exponential growth and market leader status. BMH exceeds the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan target for prescribing beta-blockers for heart attack patients when they leave the hospital by about 2 percent—a measure designed to decrease the chances of a recurrent heart attack. BMH also approaches top-10 percent performance, as defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for delivering antibiotics within one hour of surgical incision, which helps reduce the incidence of infection and the patient’s length of stay. And, since 2004, the pediatric intensive care unit has had no cases of ventilator-acquired pneumonia.
A number of accreditation and quality rating organizations have designated BMH as a “best practice” organization. For example, HealthGrades, a healthcare organization that rates 5,000 hospitals, gave BMH its 5-star ranking—the highest possible—for its acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) and hip replacement practices.
In addition to providing excellent healthcare services, BMH focuses on patient needs with “listening and learning” methods such as patient satisfaction surveys, post-discharge telephone calls, focus groups, and community surveys to ensure the hospital maintains a culture of service excellence as well as patient loyalty. In addition, BMH leaders and patient relations staff conduct “rounds” to talk to and learn from patients and visitors.
Using the Gallup national database, BMH results for Loyalty, Likelihood to Return, ranked in the 97th percentile or better for Inpatients, Outpatient Surgery, and Outpatient Testing.
A Leader in TechnologyAs healthcare continues to evolve in an information saturated society, investment in technology, equipment, and facilities becomes critical for success. In 2005, BMH dedicated over $28 million to capital investment, more than 7 percent of total budgeted expenses, in information
technology, equipment, and facilities. BMH employs technologies such as the Picture Archiving Communications System (PACS) that allows physicians to readily access patient medical records and diagnostic images via computer. In addition, the system allows physicians to provide patient care from off-site locations by accessing patient information through a secure Internet connection.
As a wireless campus, all visitors, patients, and staff can access the Internet via workstations. While on site, patients and visitors have access to maps, service directories, and other information through interactive kiosks and the public web site. All BMH employees have access to email and to the BMH intranet as well. Off-site data centers to secure data and a comprehensive disaster management process are key elements of BMH’s plan to ensure continuity of operations during an emergency.
Committing to Workplace ExcellenceSince the mid-1990s, BMH has focused on becoming the employer of choice in the region. The hospital’s Workforce Development Plan includes strategies needed to develop and retain the current workforce as well as those needed to address future staff recruitment, retention, development, and diversity. For example, to fill a critical need for respiratory therapists, BMH provides interested staff members with financial assistance, including benefits and payment for tuition and books, while they are attending classes. Efforts to create a future workforce include awarding scholarships to children of employees to pursue college degrees in healthcare.
To keep everyone focused on excellence and high performance, BMH’s Staff Performance Management System aligns individual performance with the organization’s Three Cs, annual objectives, and action plans. Reward and recognition are directly related to the results achieved.
Regular review and coaching are an integral part of the SPMS process.
BMH encourages employee development, learning, health, and wellness. Investment in employee development has increased from $3,108 per full-time employee in 2002 to a projected $4,453 in 2005. Employee learning has jumped from 31 hours per full-time employee in 2002 to 108.5 hours annualized for 2005. Three programs are designed to nurture current and future leaders: the Leadership Initiative, the Physician Leadership Academy, and the Management Mentor program. Employee wellness is supported through a number of reimbursable wellness/preventive benefits,
including personal trainers, massage therapy, smoking cessation, and weight-loss programs.
This commitment to workplace excellence is paying off in a number of key areas. BMH exceeds best practice levels for key indicators of work system performance and effectiveness including 2005 annualized employee turnover at 5.6 percent, registered nurse turnover at 4.7 percent, and job vacancy rates at 5.3 percent. The rate of vacant positions for registered nurses has been reduced from 6.5 percent in 2002 to 5 percent in 2005, significantly outperforming the national American Nurse Credentialing Center best practice comparison of 10.6 percent.
Bronson also has received high marks for its commitment to the environment and its community. For three years in a row, BMH has received the Environmental Leadership Award presented by Hospitals for a Healthy Environment for its efforts to reduce waste and pollution. In 2004, BMH
recycled 44 percent of its total waste stream and, by switching to a new treatment for medical waste, decreased the amount of waste going to landfills by 85 percent. In 2004, BMH staff volunteered more than 50,000 hours in health-related community activities. Since 2001, BMH has been named a United Way “Pacesetter” organization; in 2005, its United Way contributions totaled $330,000.
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