A stock investment in Baldrige winners yields an impressive payoff. In a study that NIST is releasing today, the 16 publicly-traded Baldrige winners outperformed the Standard and Poors 500 by about 3 to 1. And Manufacturing News recently reported that companies that stressed quality throughout their entire operation saw sales grow by an average of nearly 16 percent per year. With these kinds of results, we have to find a way to spread the Baldrige Award message beyond private industry. A recent report prepared by the Council on Competitiveness pointed out the extraordinary challenges facing our health care industry.
Providers feel the pressure to deliver better quality at a lower price.
And the burden often gets passed to American businesses, whose global competitiveness suffers because of the high health premiums they're paying for their employees. We face similar challenges in education, which is why the President has made the issue his top priority in his second term. Our system is falling short of its potential. We need to the raise the standards of excellence in teaching and enhance our learning environments, so that our children are prepared to assume leadership roles in a high-tech, competitive 21st century economy. When it comes to health care and education, we all want to drive costs down and quality up.