Arroyo Fresco Study - Essay Example

This case study response assesses the Arroyo Fresco Community Health Clinic’s strategy under the Baldrige National Quality Program criteria and proposes new strategies to assist the organization in meeting their performance excellence goals. Arroyo Fresco (AF) is a nonprofit Community Health Center (CHC) serving Western Arizona from 11 clinics and 4 mobile service vans. AF serves three counties- Yuma, Mojave, and La Paz in a service area of over 23,000 square miles, but with a population of fewer than 400,000 people.

Arroyo Fresco’s stated mission is to provide residents of Yuma, Lap Paz, and Mojave counties easy and timely access to high-quality and safe health care services; responsive to their diverse cultural and socioeconomic needs, regardless of their ability to pay (AF Case Study). In general, AF’s senior leaders have implemented a focus on results that created value through the development of the FOCUS (Financial Performance, Organizational Learning, Clinical Excellence, Utilization, and Satisfaction) framework, which allows the organization to address key strategic challenges and align its efforts on key areas to maximize the use of limited resources (nist.gov). AF demonstrated favorable performance levels in key results areas, including some clinical outcome measures that show favorable trends for the past four to five years (nist.gov) but there are several areas with opportunities for improvement.

Under the Baldrige criteria, health care performance excellence is embodied in seven categories – leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management; and results. values (VMV) is not clearly articulated in their strategy, particularly how this is conveyed to patients, other customers, and suppliers. There does not appear to be a well-defined approach for senior leaders to empower and motivate all staff and