A Culture of High Performance: Achieving Higher Quality at a Lower Cost

Studies show that people need three compliments to every criticism in order to maintain passion.

leading in today’s changing healthcare environment takes tremendous fortitude. Benjamin Taylor, MD, MPH, the chief quality and safety officer at University of Alabama at Birmingham Health, notes that “It’s not complicated; it’s just really hard.

service, quality, finance, people, and growth.

If we don’t address performance issues—which means recruiting and retaining high performers, retaining and developing middle/solid performers, and moving low/subpar performers up or out—the organization moves backward.

“The healthcare industry needs to turn the vicious cycle of inefficiency, increasing costs, and lower quality into a virtuous cycle of transparency, efficiency, and the highest level of quality. This must happen one organization at a time. The key is to create a culture capable of not just setting such a transformation in motion, but also sustainin

getting those who were not willing to buy into the organization’s emphasis on accountability “off the bus.

Thanks to all the Fire Starters who have been there from the beginning. You continue to ignite passion in others. Your work continues to make healthcare a better place for employees to work, physicians to practice medicine, and patients and families to receive care.

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while the organization may have eight to ten key metrics, individual leaders should carry between four and eight metrics on their evaluations. This allows for prioritization and focus on the most important things via weighting,