Hill Country Memorial and St. David's HealthCare, both in Texas, are among the four winners of the annual Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a presidential honor recognizing performance excellence.
The winners are role models in innovation, management, employee and customer satisfaction, and generating results, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said in an announcement released Wednesday.
This year's only two healthcare winners are Hill Country, an 86-bed not-for-profit community hospital in Fredericksburg, and St. David's, an Austin-based health system.
Hill Country was recognized for consistent performance on its outcomes, which has also earned it recognition as one of Truven Health Analytics' 100 Top Hospitals three years in a row, the announcement said.
Likewise, St. David's composite performance on core measures reported to the CMS is equal to, or better than, the top 10% of healthcare systems nationally for each disease group. And two of its hospitals also have been on Truven's 100 Top list multiple times.
The award—named to honor former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, who was a proponent of quality management as a key to national prosperity—is the highest level of recognition for performance excellence a U.S. organization can receive.
