Quality Management in Healthcare, Research Paper Example

Most of The private hospitals, managed caregivers and hospital systems have exercised quality management undertakings. Number of payers and consumers are connecting the concept of “quality” with cost effectiveness (Demos, 2004)

Quality refers to personal evaluation of the outcome and interactions encountered as the output is delivered. Quality arises from the value system, which enables quality expectation to be measured and altered following advanced technology.

Quality constitutes of:

• Quality content
• Delivery quality

Content quality entails the medical outcomes gained, the main players in evaluation comprise of physician and health care professionals. Delivery quality is associated with the concern of the customers towards the condition of care facility for the patient. For instance, concern whether the hospital is in good condition, if nurses were caring and whether services were delivered rapidly. Content quality and delivery quality interact widely. The two concepts foster understanding and analysis of health care quality.

Health care delivery is different from other industries; the difference is realized through medicine traditional approach to content quality. Medicine tradition approach has a mandate to judge its own quality.

Another difference is that medicine has the opportunity for customer education. The health care industry has a great opportunity; they are able to set the expectation at the time the patient enters the hospital.

To find out customers satisfaction in healthcare, 3,000 individuals were surveyed to discover factors that determine perceptions of hospital quality. Random samples from both entire population and from patients who had recently been hospitalized at the heath care facility (Berwick, 2009). Researchers were able to divide patients into three groups using cluster analysis. Comprise of (information seekers, comfort seekers, prestige seekers). Various factors that patients pointed out were linked with hospital quality: this include:

• Qualification of nurses
• Reliability of physician’s specialists
• Smoothness of admission and discharge
• Quick response

The above mentioned factors were measures of content quality which could not be evaluated by patients. The patient’s address to this was determined by health care team if they were able to give an explanation on the factors patients pointed out. Teams are used to inform patients and caregivers (family) of the disease processes and ways of treatment (Scholtes, 2008).

References

Berwick, D.M. (2009). Sounding Board Continues Improvement as an Ideal in Health Care. New York: New England journal of medicine

Demos, M.P (2004) Statistical Quality Control’s Role in Health Care Management. NY: Kraus International Publications

Jaran, J (2008) Quality Planning and Analysis: From Product Development. Madison, WI: Joiner Associates, Inc.

Scholtes, P.R (2008) The Team Handbook: How to Use Teams to Improve Quality. New York City: John Wiley & Sons