Honoring peak performance

Eight federal organizations with exemplary records in quality

The program was created in 1988 to highlight peak-performing federal operations. A panel of government and private sector quality management specialists choose the winners. For the second year in a row, however, no organization won the program's top prize, the Presidential Award for Quality

In the program, which is administered by the Office of Personnel Management, applicants are reviewed in a rigorous threephase process: a written application review, an on-site visit and a final evaluation by a panel of judges from government and the private sector.

This year's winners:

AWARD FOR QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

James A. Haley Veterans Hospital and Clinics provides health care for veterans, operating more than 600 hospital and nursing home beds in central Florida. The hospital began its quality improvement program in the early 1990s, and has received numerous awards over the last few years for outstanding service, including a President's Quality Merit Award in 1998. The hospital has compiled an impressive list of accomplishments: decreasing the turnaround time for radiology exam reports from eight days to one; shortening the reporting time for routine lab reports from more than four hours to 30 minutes; reshaping the inpatient substance abuse care program, resulting in a much greater number of patients treated (from 4,100 to 16,400) over four years; and implementing a telemedicine pilot program, known as TeleHomeCare, for spinal cord injury and geriatric patients, resulting in a 40 percent to 60 percent reduction in admissions and inpatient hospital days.