ervices, are becoming more and more essential to the well-being of our nation's economy..." (Findings and Purposes Public Law 100-107). It maintained that quality improvement was directly applicable to service industries, as well as manufacturing, and to both the public and the private sector.
Public Law 100-107 saw that "in order to be successful, quality improvement programs must be management-led and customer-oriented, and this may require fundamental changes in the way companies and agencies do business" (Baldrige, 2001). It believed that a national quality award program in the United States could help improve quality and productivity as such programs had done overseas. It aimed to recognize companies and agencies which achieved improvements in quality of goods and services, stimulating them to do so for the pride of recognition, and at the same time, maintaining a competitive edge by increasing their profits. It was believed that these achievements would then provide an example to others, and establish guidelines which could be used by business, industry, government, and other organizations for evaluating their own quality improvement efforts. By providing detailed information on how successful organizations were able to achieve excellence in quality improvement, it would also provide specific guidance for American organizations wishing to learn how to manage for high quality. These principles are applicable to the improvement of health care quality in hospitals.
In 2001, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed to make medicare quality improvement organizations responsible for improving public reporting of hospital quality information (Hospital, 2001). Its seventh statement of work for the organizations (formerly known as Medicare Peer Review Organizations) planned to require the organizations to conduct pilot studies in a small number of states already having mandatory provider reporting so th...