Athens Limestone Hospital Emergency Department entrance off of Market Street.

ATHENS – Recently announced, only two organizations were awarded the 2023 Alabama Performance Excellence Level 2 Awards. The award recognizes organizations’ quality and performance excellence. This is the second time that Athens-Limestone Hospital has accomplished this level of achievement.

The award recognizes the organization for its progress and improvements to become the best at what they do. The accompanying press release is from ALPEx regarding the criteria and importance of the award.

The recognition results from an intentional team approach.

“I am honored and excited that we have received this prestigious award in recognition of quality and performance excellence. The decision to begin utilizing the Baldrige Framework in 2017 was pivotal in our approach to systematically improve safety, quality and overall operations. Performance excellence is a worthwhile journey that involves collaboration and participation from our employees, medical staff, partners and stakeholders. Our mission, ‘Be the Difference’ and vision, ‘Excellence Always’ propels us on this journey through continuous learning so that we provide the highest level of safe, quality patient care and experience, support an engaged workforce and experience continued growth,” said Stephanie Ritter, BSN, RN, Executive Director of Quality, Education and Performance Excellence.

The process of applying forces an organization to do a self-assessment. The judges provide an audit based upon performance criteria from the Baldrige Excellence Framework. This is a valuable process and affirming award that Athens-Limestone Hospital puts quality and safety first and continues to use effective productivity and quality improvement strategies, techniques and/or practices.