2006 Priority Health Quality Award Winner

Advantage Health - Northwest
Teamwork and pride, the mantra preached by every team sports coach in the country, are put into practice every day in the Advantage Health - Northwest office.

"This is one of the top-performing offices in our organization," says Sue Viviano, senior medical management specialist for Advantage Health. "Everything is so integrated here that you can tell it's just a total team effort."

Office Lead RN Nancy Tamminga and Site Manager Doreen Lutz have specifically championed quality and promoted skills enhancement for the staff. It's a task that doesn't take much effort with this group of motivated professionals.

"As an organization, we set goals," Lutz says. "And we see that we're getting better and better, and we like to see our office be the higher one [among Advantage Health offices], so we see what we can do to improve ourselves and give the patients quality care."

A good example of the office's teamwork and pride is its 100% score on childhood immunizations in Priority Health's measurement system.

Achieving perfection on this important measure and reaching other quality goals is the result of staff and physicians that push each other; nurses will alert physicians to patients who are overdue for services, and the physicians will call the patients themselves, if necessary.

"They [the nursing staff] really own those patients," says Dr. Sally Kliphuis, one of the office's four physicians. "They want them to have good numbers and good care. It's a partnership."