The Oregon Caregiver SPRING/SUMMER 2024 www.ohca.com 12 Learn More About the National Quality Award Program By Nicolette Reilly, Oregon Health Care Association The AHCA/NCAL National Quality Award program recognizes long term care providers for their commitment to and achievements in quality improvement. The award journey creates a foundation that builds and sustains improvement in critical areas such as workforce, operations, leadership, and strategic planning. It encourages providers to evaluate their organizations’ strengths and opportunities; identify critical areas for improvement; and implement a plan to be stronger, more resilient, and more successful than ever before. The threetiered program evaluates long term care providers’ capabilities against nationally recognized standards for excellence, making it one of the most comprehensive active performance assessments available to providers. Each progressive award level—bronze (commitment to quality), silver (achievement in quality), and gold (excellence in quality)—requires a more detailed demonstration of superior performance. The bronze award level provides applicants with the tools and resources needed for continuous improvement in quality care. Through the bronze criteria, based on the Baldrige Excellence Framework, applicants assess their organization’s mission, vision, and key factors that lead to success. At this award level, utilizing the criteria questions, applicants develop an organizational profile for their center. This level supports the building of strong foundations to grow and advance quality in the facility. At the silver award level, applicants continue to learn and develop effective approaches that help improve performance and health care outcomes. The silver criteria provides applicants with a thorough assessment of how their organization works, its effectiveness, and tools for improvement in their approaches. At the gold award level, applicants must show superior performance in areas including leadership, strategic planning, and customer and staff satisfaction. By completing the gold level criteria, organizations take their quality journey to a higher level through the valuable feedback received in the application process and thereby reaching organizational goals. Gold applicants address the Baldrige Excellence Framework in its entirety. To maintain active recipient status, recipients have three years from the year the facility received the award to advance to the next level or reapply for the current level. OHCA encourages all member facilities to apply for this program each year as a part of their quality journey and commitment to continuous improvement. Please visit this link to learn more: https://www.ahcancal.org/Quality. Nicolette Reilly is the SVP of Quality at OHCA. QUALITY
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