Improvement Initiative

or

DEHE's Journey to Excellence

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) is actively engaged in activities to improve the organization using the Baldrige National Quality Program Criteria for Performance Excellence. These criteria are designed to:

·        Deliver ever-improving value to customers:

·        Help us improve our organizational performance practices, capabilities and results;

·        Facilitate communication and sharing of best practices information within ANTHC and throughout our network of partners; and

·        Serve as a framework for understanding and managing our performance and for guiding planning and opportunities for learning

The ANTHC Division of Environment and Health Engineering (DEHE) has undertaken many initiatives to pursue our journey to excellence. One of the initiatives is to create employee directed compass committees to help guide the direction for DEHE. Three committees have been formed and each committee has subcommittees and workgroups that work on specific issues. The compass committees are:

Technical Assistance and Consultation Compass Committee: TACCC is responsible for improved results in the delivery of technical assistance and consultation to external customers. This is accomplished through internal processes such as production line efficiency, product and service quality, meeting of customer needs and expectations and facilitation of Division integration.

Organization Growth and Learning: OGL is responsible for overseeing the ongoing planning, education, training, appropriate information exchange, compensation, recognition, and employee feedback systems at DEHE. The OGL provides recommendations to the C4, Division Leadership Team (DLT), and the Senior Director on DEHE's goal of a high performance workforce.

Facility Construction Compass Committee: FCCC is the employee gateway for suggesting and participating in process improvements to facility construction production lines.

Coordinating these compass committees is the Combined Compass Committee Council. The C4 pulls together the three Compass Committees and the Division Leadership Team.

One of the key characteristics of top performing organizations is their focus on customer satisfaction. We determined one way we could measure the success of our efforts to provide both necessary and desired services to our constituents and partners, and to generally assess the status of our relationships, was to ask them how things are going and what's on their minds.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the customer satisfaction survey is to:

·        Determine the customer’s perceptions and attitudes regarding the quality of service received including the working relationship with DEHE staff.

·        Provide DEHE employees with the ability to accomplish the “Service” evaluation on a reoccurring basis.

·        Identify the characteristics that promote customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the Health Facilities, Environmental Health and Denali Commission products and services.

·        Identify the level of customer loyalty associated with using the ANTHC DEHE to provide those products and services.

During the fall of 2003 a customer satisfaction survey of our Sanitation Facility Construction customers was conducted. A copy of the results is available here. A follow-up survey for this program is available here.  During the early summer of 2005 a customer satisfaction survey of our Health Facilities, Injury Prevention, Environmental Health, Institutional Environmental Health, and Denali Commission Programs was conducted. A copy of the results is available here.

Division Leaders and managers are using this information to enhance decision-making relative to achieving DEHE's role and customer strategy.

If you have any questions about our journey to excellence, or would like to find out more information, please contact one of our DEHE employees or contact Greg Wilkie.