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 measures, and how the recognition has helped internally with staff. She also talks about their safety huddles, the importance of "engaging those closest to the work," and the need for a "systematic approach" to capture Rapid Improvement Events and daily improvement work and how their use of KaiNexus has supported those efforts. The hospital was previously featured in episode #201: Ron Smith & Suz Kaprich, the KaiNexus WorkOut at Mary Greeley Medical Center. For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/218. Podcasts are sponsored by KaiNexus and their continuous improvement software platform -- www.KaiNexus.com For earlier episodes of the Lean Blog Podcast, visit the main Podcast page at www.leanpodcast.org, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes.