Patricia K. Stoltz, PA, MHSA

In Their Own Words:

"I started my health care career on the front line, taking care of pediatric patients and their families in an outpatient medical center. In a few years, increasing demand changed a small provider team into a clinic staff three times bigger, operating seven days a week and most evenings. I experienced firsthand how maintaining the service and quality of care we all aspired to, and knew we were capable of delivering, depended on leadership vision and strategy, and process design and innovation, guided by thinking about every unit giving care—and indeed, the whole organization—as a system. Helping leaders make health care organizations places to work where every person is able to give his or her very best to patients, a place where good care happens because of, not in spite of ‘the system’—that’s been my passion and purpose ever since. Baldrige offers a framework and a process to help leaders structure and accelerate their efforts to build just that kind of system."

Patricia K. Stoltz, PA, MHSA

Experience

Trish has fifteen years of experience as a leader in quality improvement at Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, at system, business-unit, and work-group levels. Her principal responsibilities included consultation with senior executives on performance measurement and improvement, including the design and implementation of large-scale change initiatives, such as development and deployment of mission, vision, and values; reduction in surgical site infections; and reengineering of behavioral health services delivery. Her special interest is the role of leadership in organizational change.

She has served on the Board of Examiners, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, as an Examiner (1999), Senior Examiner (2000-2004), and Alumni Examiner (2006-09), leading teams on site visits to some of the nation's highest performing organization. During the mid-1990s she helped draft and pilot the first Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence for health care. She also serves on the Panel of Judges for the Michigan Quality Leadership Award, a Baldrige-based state assessment and recognition program, and conducts workshops to train state examiners.

Trish holds a Master's Degree in Health Services Administration from the University of Michigan, School of Public Health, and has taught graduate students in quality management at University of Detroit Mercy, College of Health Professions. She was trained as a physician's assistant and spent ten years in direct patient care delivery, specializing in pediatrics and adolescent health.