Wright Medical Center
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Wright Medical Center 1316 South Main Clarion, IA (Iowa) 50525 1(866)-426-4188
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[edit] History
In the late 1940’s the idea of a new modern hospital for Clarion and the surrounding communities took root. After a tortuous and deeply emotional debate – according to the Wright County Monitor, the idea became a reality when “sufficient funds were present” to hire an architect. Plans were designed, a site was donated and the hospital we knew then as Community Memorial Hospital was built. An editorial in the Monitor at the time stated this about the original building: “To say that Clarion’s hospital is one of the finest structures we have ever seen is a gross understatement.” The people of Clarion were obviously impressed with the new structure. Since that time, the hospital has had several more major additions and renovations that were completed in 1962, 1966, 1972, 1982, 1992 and more recently in 1997 when Project Healthcare was completed and the new 9 bed wing became a reality. Community Memorial Hospital admitted its first patient on November 29, 1951. That was almost 52 years ago. And my how they have grown since then.
Ten years ago the Meadows were built and celebrated their 10 year anniversary on July 2, 2003. The Meadows independent retirement community was developed to meet the needs of the elderly residents of the community. Bob and Jane Davison donated the land where the Meadows is built and played an instrumental role in the kickoff of the idea. There were 4 “Bobs” who played a large role in the success of the Meadows. Bob Davison, who donated the land with his wife, Jane; Bob Kay, who brought the idea of an independent retirement facility to Clarion and then did much of the research on the project and Bob Eaton, who contributed many excellent design ideas and Bob Orcutt. After all this planning, the Meadows became a reality in 1993.
In 2006 a major renovation and expansion project took place. An addition was built at the southeast corner of the complex and the entire building was remodelled at a cost of $4.5 million. Also at that time an addition was built to the Meadows which houses an 18-unit assisted living facility. In 2007 the new Wright Medical Wellness Center was built in Eagle Grove.
In 2007 Wright Medical Center and Belmond Medical Center began collaboration by sharing administration, physicians and other ways to minimize the number of patients leaving Wright County for healthcare.
[edit] Service Excellence
Wright Medical Center began a journey with a "Service Excellence" initiative in June of 2001 and has experienced tremendous improvements in patient, employee and physician satisfaction since. This commitment began at Wright Medical Center with a Board of Directors and a CEO that believed that we were a good medical center, but wanted to raise the bar to become a great medical center. We have persistently followed the advice of the "Studer Group", which is a consulting firm that specializes in assisting medical centers in achieving "Operational Excellence". According to Quint Studer "Operational Excellence" is defined as the relentless drive to reach extraordinary results through a combination of service excellence, leadership development and accountability systems. Quint Studer, founder of the Studer Group took a hospital in Chicago that was suffering with horrible patient satisfaction scores (under 10%) to a hospital with great patient satisfaction scores (99%). He then went to Pensacola, Florida and obtained the same results. After proving his ideas worked, he took his "show on the road" and now has a very successful business teaching other medical facilities some very prescriptive "to do's" that improve health care for everyone. The Studer Group also recommends a balanced pillar approach. The five pillars are Quality, People, Growth, Financial and Service. A culture of service and operational excellence attracts and retains talented staff, is financially stable, has excellent clinical outcomes, is growing, is full of employee generated ideas for improvement and maintains patient, employee, and physician satisfaction at high levels.
Wright Medical Center has a fantastic staff of professionals that have embraced the vision and realize that mediocrity is not accepted at Wright Medical Center. The staff at Wright Medical Center does rewarding work and daily "Make a Difference" in the lives of the patients and families they touch. The staff at Wright Medical Center strives to have our customers leave saying "Wow! I could not have received care like this anywhere else! Those people really cared about me!".
Please continue to offer your feedback to Wright Medical Center. When you offer us positive feedback we share it with everyone so that they know that you have appreciated their extra efforts. We also know that we still have a lot of work to do! If we do not meet your expectations please let us know so that we can follow up on improvement!
[edit] Summit Award
Wright Medical Center is proud to announce that Press Ganey Associates has named it a 2006 Summit Award Winner. Press Ganey is a nationally recognized company that partners with health care facilities to measure the level of customer satisfaction and improve their quality of health care delivery. More than one-third of U.S. inpatient hospitals currently partner with Press Ganey. The company’s databases are the largest in the industry, and allow facilities nationwide to benchmark their results against peer organizations. The Summit Award recognizes top performing facilities that sustain the highest level of customer satisfaction for three or more consecutive years. The Press Ganey Summit Award is the health care satisfaction industry’s most coveted symbol of achievement bestowed annually, and Wright Medical Center is just one of the nation’s 61 overall organizations to receive this honor and just one of 14 inpatient facilities.
The Summit Award recognizes a dedication to service excellence and exceptional customer satisfaction. This coveted symbol of achievement is only awarded to facilities who maintain in the top 5% of the Press Ganey database, for a minimum of three years.
The Summit Award recognizes top performing facilities that sustain the highest level of customer satisfaction for three or more consecutive years. The Press Ganey Summit Award is the health care satisfaction industry’s most coveted symbol of achievement bestowed annually.
[edit] Firestarter Award
There is something to be said about the excitement one feels when getting a personal phone call from the guru of healthcare himself. That feeling soars to a whole different level when Quint Studer is telling you that you have been selected to receive the Firestarter Award courtesy of the StuderGroup.
Rewind four years…when the senior leaders at Wright Medical Center attended Quint's "9 principles" institute in Pensacola, there was excitement and an overwhelming feeling at the thought of changing the culture in our small, rural hospital. At the time, operating margins did not allow us to engage in a full coaching relationship. So we begged and borrowed everything that the Studergroup had to offer and attended every conference that we could. This really opened our eyes to the healthcare world beyond our borders. Surprisingly, we found that no matter what the size of the institution; all followed the same principles. Gail Boylan from the Studergroup came to Clarion, Iowa in the summer of 2002 at a quarterly Leadership Development Institute and lit the spark with the rest of the leadership crew, the medical staff and the Governing Board. Gail told the CEO that the most difficult part of the journey would be holding everyone accountable. She was right. As a result, we made some hard staffing decisions. Per Good to Great the goal of Wright Medical Center is to always have the right people, in the right seats on our "bus".
The perception of most rural healthcare facilities by the folks who live in the rural communities is that they are merely band-aid stations. They are seen as stops along the way to “real” care in a bigger metropolitan hospital. Wright Medical Center has taken a different approach and we are trying to change that long-standing perception. We are quickly becoming much more than "just a hospital". We are positively influencing the lives of the patients in our service area and are supporting their efforts to live a healthy lifestyle. We are in the process of building and remodeling the entire medical center to be a healing environment that will reduce overall stress and thereby improve quality and service.
Wright Medical Center offers free massages to all patients, warm spa-like robes, softer lighting, wireless internet service, complimentary long distance phone cards, in-room video games and DVD player, and gift bags upon admission complete with our own blended aromatherapy lotion, mints/candies, etc. very much in the style of a 5-star resort. We try very hard to anticipate the needs of our patients well in advance of hearing it from them. We pride ourselves on being innovative and caring of the communities that we serve. Our staff plays active roles in most every board and volunteer organization in the county. The services of our medical center reach far and wide – from free clinics to domestic and sexual abuse centers, from wellness and fitness centers to providing meals to home bound and low-income seniors. Wright Medical Center strives to provide proactive leadership and not reactive management. We have challenged ourselves to create the new standard for which all rural health care will be based.
What service excellence has allowed us to do is raise the bar not only for ourselves but our entire community and we are finding that many other businesses are standing up and taking notice of what we are doing right and are following our lead. Being told four years ago that we probably couldn’t afford the typical coaching relationship didn’t faze us at all. Rural Iowa requires one to be relentlessly persistent and stubbornly optimistic. At a Leadership Development Institute in 2003, the CEO happily discovered that a sense of urgency (lack of patience) is actually a good thing. He realized that the path to success does not lie in who makes the most money but who creates the best organization. Our senior leaders rededicated themselves to the organization and pledged their time and talents to this new culture. Their willingness to accept complaints as gifts and challenge all staff to continually raise the bar in everything they do along with a staff willing to do what it takes to achieve greatness has proven very successful.
Over the past several years, Wright Medical Center has been asked to share our story with several other hospitals throughout the Midwest. As our accountability and dedication to the principles and the pillars grew, our flywheel began producing amazing results. And we have the numbers to back it up. In 2003, our employees were asked to take a Press Ganey satisfaction survey. The results were staggering. Our composite satisfaction score was 95% and our morale score was at 100%. We are going to measure again in March, our turnover statistics remain at 2% and we have no RN openings at the present time. For the past three years, our growth statistics have grown by 10% each year. Our present Press Ganey National Patient Satisfaction scores are: inpatient 98%, quality of our food 94%, room cleanliness 98%, outpatient 94%, ER 99%, Medical practice 82%, and ambulatory surgery 54%.
In November of 2003, we hit the "2 year wall". We broke through this by re-creating our Service Excellence Teams to Pillar Teams, which include front line employees from every department. This proved to be the communication venue our employees were wanting. We continue to have our "Reward and Recognition Team" that chooses our Employee of the month and the Employee of the Year and our "Celebrations, Communications, and Events Team" that keep it fun and make us all look forward to coming to work each day.
After attending the Firestarter Reunion in June, it was very apparent that we needed to do a better job with alignment of our goals throughout the organization. In October of 2004, a new leadership evaluation and employee evaluation were rolled out to the staff using Quint's High, Medium, Low criteria. Discussions were conducted with all of our staff as a baseline for performance improvement. These open and honest discussions continue to aid in the development of our already awesome staff as we go on our journey from good to great.
Our journey continues as we strive for Organizational Excellence. We are looking forward to our new partnership with the StuderGroup and our new rural partners.
