Sutter Davis Hospital honored for performance excellence

Sutter Davis Hospital received the Governor’s Award for Performance Excellence from the California Council for Excellence at an awards ceremony last week.

This is the highest level of recognition from the California Council for Excellence, part of a nationwide alliance with the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program honoring American organizations that demonstrate the highest levels of quality and performance. Sutter Davis Hospital is the fifth California organization in 19 years to be honored with the prestigious Governor’s Award.

Sutter Davis Hospital, part of Sutter Health’s Northern California network of hospitals and physicians, was recognized for its visionary leadership, an integrated strategic planning process and a strong focus on process improvement and management.

“Most of the hospital’s key performance results are within the top 10 percent of comparable organizations, demonstrating a passion for excellence that is driving Sutter Davis to achieve prominence in health care,” said Denise Shields, CCE chair. “Sutter Davis can take pride in its accomplishments.”

Added Kish Rajan, director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, “I applaud Sutter Davis Hospital for receiving this award that recognizes its exceptional track record to develop and perform leading practices and performances in the health care field.

“We at GO-Biz are proud of our relationship with the Sutter Health family, working together in the last year on its expansion of more than 1,000 jobs in California. Sutter is a partner that not only creates good jobs for our state, but also develops and delivers the next generation of health care service for our citizens.”

Sutter Davis Hospital Chief Executive Officer Janet Wagner said she is grateful that California recognizes and supports high-performing, quality-driven organizations.

“Over the years, Sutter Davis Hospital has continuously improved patient care delivery,” she said. “I am very proud to work with a team that finds it important to deliver the very best high-quality care for our patients and families, and I’m delighted that Governor Jerry Brown supports quality outcomes for businesses in the state of California.”

Sutter Davis Hospital has been on a five-year journey to improve and sustain performance in seven categories: leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce focus; operations focus; and results. The hospital has pursued these tenets for performance excellence established by the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is the only “performance excellence” award presented by the president of the United States, and honors companies across every industry. The California Council for Excellence is the gateway for California-based organizations to compete for the national award, and requires rigorous focus and dedication on process improvement and results. Award recipients are evaluated through a 50-page application and a weeklong site visit.

Sutter Davis Hospital’s consistent results place it among the best hospitals in the country. It has earned a Top 100 Hospital spot from Thomson Reuters for three of the past six years, and has been named one of Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work in Healthcare since 2009. The organization also received the Studer Group Healthcare Organization Fire Starter Award in November 2012.

The 48-bed hospital, at 2000 Sutter Place in West Davis, provides care to residents of Davis, Dixon, Winters, Woodland, West Sacramento, Vacaville and rural communities throughout Yolo and Eastern Solano counties. The 94,000-square-foot hospital opened in 1994 and sits on a 20-acre medical campus. For more on the hospital, visit www.sutterdavis.org.

Founded in 1992, the California Council for Excellence is a nonprofit educational foundation dedicated to helping California-based organizations achieve world-class results through the principles and criteria of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. For more information, visit www.calexcellence.org.