New Triple Crown Trophy at UMMS Increases Nursing Engagement, Unites Compass Teams 

A decision to revamp the Patient Experience associate celebrations at the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) has led to some favorable results: Patient satisfaction and nursing engagement scores have increased; hospital officials are more engaged and regularly participate in the celebrations, and the Crothall and Morrison teams are working together better than ever to boost patient care. 

In the past, the Crothall and Morrison teams held their own celebrations at each of the nine hospitals in the UMMS system. But the Patient Experience team believed it could achieve several goals with a single monthly celebration for the entire team and the hospital. 

“We are a large system with multiple locations, operations, clients, and team members divided by geography and service lines,” says Jood Ali, Senior System Patient Experience Manager for Compass Healthcare. The improvements we’ve made to celebrate our associates’ accomplishments are uniting us to better serve patients while improving our engagement with the Nursing team.” 

Streamlining the Celebration Process 

Jood’s idea to centralize the celebrations began in February 2025. She outlined a new criterion to reward associates focused on the Positive Impressions program. In addition to recognizing one patient dining and housekeeping associate each month, the award also recognizes one Nursing unit. 

Using three months of data, individual winners are chosen based on their performance using three patient satisfaction questions from the Press Ganey survey: 

• Staff worked together to care for you, which is also used in the HCAHPS score. 

• Courtesy of the Morrison associate delivering the food; 

• Courtesy of the Crothall associate cleaning the patient room. 

Six months after the Triple Crown Trophy was implemented, patient satisfaction scores at UMMS have been impressive in all three categories. 

• Scores for “courtesy of the person cleaning patient rooms” rose 1.7 points to 67.73. 

• “The courtesy of the person serving food” jumped four points to 69.73; 

• The increase was highest for “Staff worked together for you,” increasing 4.5 points to 73.24. 

“We are continuing to trend higher this year than at the same time last year,” says Jood. She says the trend applies to other questions used to measure each service line and communications with Nursing, providing additional evidence that the program is paying off. 

In addition to these benefits, fewer events reduce the costs and preparation time for the monthly celebrations. 

How the System Was Revamped 

Redesigning the associate celebrations meant a lot of extra work to meet Jood’s goals. 

However, Zainab Ali, Morrison Healthcare’s System Patient Experience Manager, and Sherry Smallwood, a former Patient Experience Manager, were promoted to Operations Manager and stepped up to the challenge.  

Their charge was to present two options for advertising the celebrations, including a new name, a type of trophy (metal, glass, or belt), and other items such as certificates and banners for the winners. 

After developing two options for each category, all Morrison and Crothall associates chose one, including selecting “Triple Crown Trophy” as the new name. 

“The Triple Crown Trophy is a natural fit,” says Zainab. “The award is based on three distinct scoring criteria, and Maryland’s strong cultural connection to horse racing made the Triple Crown an especially meaningful and locally relevant symbol.” 

Celebrating the Winners 

The first celebration using the new Triple Crown Trophy took place in June 2025 at the Upper Chesapeake Medical Center, drawing a large crowd from both service lines, the hospital nursing team, and patient experience managers and associates. 

Each month, a banner and the Triple Crown Trophy are presented to the winning unit, which keeps the trophy until the next month. Triple Crown “certificate of achievement” awards are signed by Crothall and Morrison leaders to recognize the winning patient dining associate, housekeeper, and the nursing unit. In addition, certificates are given to all frontline associates supporting the winning unit.