First Device Firm to Win Baldrige Award Finds Profit in Quality

An MD&DI January 1997 Feature Article

Part III: PROFITING FROM QUALITY

The many quality changes, especially the emphasis on continuous improvement,have led to a fundamental redirection of thought at every level of the company,according to Keare. This change in thinking has spurred the company to explorenew opportunities, such as the development of molecular coincidence detection(MCD), a technology that expands the capabilities of conventional nuclearmedicine cameras to allow imaging of positron-emitting isotopes. Prior to thisdevelopment, positron imaging was mostly done at institutions possessing a PET(positron emission tomography) scanner, a stand-alone instrument that costs upto $2 million.

Revamping the electronics in standard nuclear medicine cameras, which arewidely used for studies of the heart, opened the door for use of bothconventional radioisotopes and positron isotopes, which have been shown in PETresearch to provide better assessments not only of the heart but also of cancerand even brain function. The company is now moving toward full production of theMCD technology while luminary sites in the United States and around the worldbuild clinical credibility for the approach.

ADAC has also developed a new suite of radiology and laboratory informationsystems. Since the early 1980s, the company had dabbled in the informationsystems markets, but in 1995, it jumped in with both feet, acquiring the assetsof struggling Community Health Computing (Houston), which offered bothlaboratory and radiology information systems. CHC was integrated into ADAC'shealth-care information systems business, which has established itself as amajor player with the LabSTAT and QuadRIS client/server products.

Lowe says that the success of these and other ADAC products will be driven by afocus on customer satisfaction--the fourth building block of the company's TQMsystem. The central focus in ADAC's customer relations has become a willingnessto listen to and act upon customer suggestions. In 1995, ADAC expanded itsability to meet customer needs with the acquisition of JD Technical Services(Washington, MO), a remanufacturer of nuclear medicine equipment.

JD fills a need for used nuclear medicine systems. Hammered by managed care andother cost constraints, health-care providers have begun looking for low-costequipment that can perform the bread-and-butter kinds of nuclear medicineexaminations done in many hospitals. Used systems are suitable if they'rereliable. For ADAC, providing this reliable used equipment was a naturaloutgrowth of listening to customers. "We knew that was a market and wedidn't have the core competencies to address it," Starr says. "With JDTechnical, we do."

ADAC's professed goal is to become the most respected and admired company in theworldwide health-care market by 1998. By implementing several quality techniquesin the last few years, the firm is closer than ever to meeting this goal.Winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1996 was just a step inwhat Mosbarger describes as a quality journey, and if the company is true to itsmantra of continuous improvement, that journey will never end.

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