This study reports on an innovative pilot project that implemented the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence in a substance abuse treatment programme, with the immediate goal of producing a Baldrige Feedback Report, and identifying ten specific high-priority Opportunities For Improvement (OFI) action items from among the criteria categories. We have been unable to discover any other literature citations in the application of Performance Excellence to substance abuse treatment services, even though a great body of literature exists for health care services. This experimental project used an innovative approach to shorten significantly the normal coaching and assessment time used by organizations when applying the Baldridge criteria. The Substance Abuse Foundation (SAF) of Long Beach, California, participated in a 10-week intervention to determine the suitability of the Baldrige criteria to substance abuse treatment programmes. A current national Baldrige examiner and a state Baldrige examiner facilitated the sessions. All sessions were tape-recorded, notes were transcribed during each session, and the content analysed used Nvivo qualitative software. Participation was voluntary, and was attended by programme managers and staff from SAF. Participants completed homework assignments between sessions, answering the Baldrige self-assessment questions for each of the seven criteria. The number of participants at each session was (M=18.6, range 14-23). Overall, participants were able to answer the Baldrige self-study questions and rate their programme with respect to conformance to the criteria. The resulting Baldrige feedback report shows strengths, OFI action items, scoring range, item score and points for each category. In the final session, participants use a process of voting to identify the top ten OFI action items. This study demonstrates the potential of using an innovative approach to shorten the coaching and assessment time when applying the Health Care Baldrige criteria within a substance abuse treatment setting.