North Mississippi Medical Center

Established in 1937, North Mississippi Medical Center

(NMMC) has grown from Tupelo’s solitary “hospital on the

hill” to the flagship hospital and referral center for North

Mississippi Health Services, a not-for-profit health care

delivery system serving 24 rural counties in northeast

Mississippi and northwest Alabama. At 650 beds, NMMC is

the largest non-government hospital in Mississippi and the

largest rural hospital in the country. 

NMMC’s 3,875 employees and 277 physicians provide a

wide array of inpatient, outpatient and emergency services

ranging from high-tech trauma and cardiac care to

compassionate home, hospice and long-term care. Providing

acute care is NMMC’s primary service generating more than

$443 million annually, 65 percent of NMMC’s operating

revenue. 

Treating disease and injury is not enough. To help

improve the region’s reputation as one of the least healthy in

the nation, NMMC offers a number of programs to educate

local residents in personal wellness, including health fairs,

mobile mammography services, and certified health

educators in schools. 

Leadership

Through its mission, “to continuously improve the health

of the people of our region,” and its vision, “to be the

provider of the best patient-centered care and health services

in America,” NMMC has created a strong culture of

compassion and caring focused on performance results. To

meet and sustain these long-term commitments, NMMC’s

leaders live by “servant leadership” concepts and have created

a no-secrets, no-excuses, open communication environment.

Under the servant leadership concept, NMMC’s leaders are

stewards of the organization’s resources, including human

and financial, and are encouraged to serve others while

staying focused on achieving results. 

For NMMC, success starts with creating an environment

that draws and nurtures the best people who provide the best

service, resulting in satisfied customers and excellent

quality, producing good financial results and requests for

more services which lead to growth. The entire organization

is aligned and managed according to these five critical factors. 

• In 2003, 2004, and 2005, NMMC was recognized by

Solucient, a leading source of information for the healthcare

industry, as one of the top 100 performance improvement

leaders. NMMC is one of only four hospitals nationwide to

be recognized for this distinction three years in a row.

• NMMC’s charitable donations, charity care, medical

cost savings, and volunteer services total about $70 million

annually. 

• In 2006, NMMC provided community services to more

than 156,000 people through free health fairs, screenings,

health education classes, and immunizations held throughout

the rural region in locations including churches and shopping

centers. 

• NMMC provides nurses to 21 elementary and middle

schools, certified health educators to three schools serving

kindergarten through fifth grade students, and certified

athletic trainers to 13 high schools.

2006

Award Winner

National Institute of Standards and Technology l Technology Administration l Department of Commerce

Baldrige National Quality Program

Malcolm Baldrige National

Quality Award

Named after the 26th Secretary of Commerce, the

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was

established by Congress in 1987 to promote excellence in organizational performance, recognize the

achievements and results of U.S. organizations,

and publicize successful performance strategies.

For more information, see http://baldrige.nist.gov/
Engaged Employees CARE

A basic belief at NMMC is that engaged, motivated

employees are the basis for achieving the mission, vision, and

“CARES” values – Compassion, Accountability, Respect,

Excellence, Smile. Beginning with the first hour of new

employee orientation and continuing throughout an

employee’s career, each employee learns that the highest

priorities are customer service and patient centered care. 

A number of mechanisms help NMMC’s employees stay

engaged and motivated, including a “Keys to Success” card

which employees carry at all times. The card lists NMMC’s

mission, vision, values, and critical success factors, as well as

the department’s and unit’s goals and the employee’s personal

goals. Other mechanisms include empowering employees to

meet customer needs, providing information needed to

respond to changing health care service needs, linking each

employee’s work to patient and operational outcomes, and

rewarding employees for initiative, cooperation, and

innovation. 

Recognizing the difficulty of recruiting health care

professionals to the rural areas it serves, NMMC focuses on

“growing their own” and finding ways to retain its top-notch

staff. In addition to more traditional methods, including

providing career counseling and partnering with local

colleges and other schools, NMMC also goes to some

unusual lengths to recruit staff. For example, NMMC has a

number of programs to educate children about careers in

health care, including “Let’s Pretend Hospital” for grade

school children and the Nurse Mentorship Academy which

encourages job shadowing and volunteering for high school

students interested in a nursing career. 

• Through tuition reimbursement and other activities,

NMMC allocates more than $1.4 million annually to help

employees upgrade skills and advance their careers.

• Since 2000, overall employee satisfaction exceeded the

90th percentile benchmark levels from Human Resources,

Inc.

• Employee satisfaction is demonstrated with an employee

retention rate of more than 89 percent since 2001.

• In 2006, physician overall satisfaction, measured by

Press Ganey Associates, surpassed NMMC’s benchmark by

eight to nine percent with overall satisfaction and ease of

practice scores at 99 percent and leadership score at 98

percent. (Press Ganey Associates provide satisfaction

measurement and improvement services to the health care

industry.)

NMMC has developed a comprehensive approach for

listening and learning from customers that includes patient

satisfaction surveys, a community relations facilitator,

community health assessments, and a complaint management

process. Multidisciplinary teams meet monthly and examine

patient satisfaction and complaints, clinical outcomes, patient

volume and staffing, market share and referral patterns. This

information is used to create new services and improve

existing ones. 

• Results for inpatient satisfaction demonstrate consistent

improvement since 2004 and, in 2006, the “Likelihood to

Recommend” scores approach Press Ganey’s 90th percentile.

• Deep vein thrombosis (blood clot) rates were reduced 65

percent and pulmonary embolism rates were reduced 45

percent resulting in cost savings of more than $760,000.

• Physician “champions” working with service line leaders

and clinical teams improved the care of patients requiring

long term mechanical ventilation resulting in decreased

mortality and length of stay in the intensive care unit and a

reduction of $2 million in the cost of care. 

• NMMC patients receiving coronary bypass surgery have

fewer infections and postoperative stroke and pulmonary

complications when benchmarked with the best (top 10-15

percent) in the Surgical Thoracic Society and the

CareScience patient outcomes database.

Clinical and Information

Innovations

In 1992, NMMC began providing physicians with

individualized performance profiles of their care

management and outcomes that were compared to local and

national benchmarks. Sharing comparative data engaged

physicians in performance improvement and set the stage for

the development of NMMC’s care-based cost management

(CBCM) approach. This approach links health care quality

and cost containment by looking beyond traditional cost

drivers, including people, equipment, and supplies, to the

issues that have a much greater impact on the actual cost of

care, including reducing variations in medical practices and

medical complications. 

• CBCM has led to more than $11 million in savings over

the last six years. 

• The CBCM approach has resulted in more efficient and

safer patient care processes, fewer complications, and shorter

lengths of stay, helping NMMC to earn the American

Hospital Association Quest for Quality Prize in 2005.

The ability to collect, organize and communicate data and

information is essential to achieving NMMC’s mission,

vision, and values and operational efficiency. In addition to

improving patient care and safety, NMMC’s award winning

management information system also allows for the creation

of an extensive research database that is utilized in NMMC’s

performance improvement process. 

• NMMC’s management information system provides

access to electronic medical records to every care giver

throughout its system, including nurses in schools, physicians

in their offices, and partner community hospitals.

For more information:

Jan Englert

North Mississippi Medical Center

830 South Gloster Street

Tupelo, Miss. 38801

Telephone: (662) 377-5900 or 1 (866) 787-8748 (toll free)

Fax: (662) 377-2223

Email: jan.englert@nmhs.net

Web site: http://www.nmhs.net/bpress