Service Planning and Management



Quality Management

Introduction

The organizations in almost every industry, especially healthcare are undergoing transformational changes by developing their processes and business practices. Healthcare organizations are increasingly looking for ways to incorporate the quality management that not only contributes in the improved patient is considered important for the productivity and growth of the organization. Quality management in healthcare means the quality of the instrument, processes, and system is maintained and sustained by management of a healthcare setting for total quality management that follows the standards of ISO 9000. The importance of Quality Management is quite high in health care industry as there are lots of challenges for the Managers to implement the Quality Management system in their respective organizations. Quality management in the field of health care ensures the provision of first rate and excellent care to all the patients. Delivering quality care and service is the core function of health care organizations such as hospitals and medical clinic and they have the responsibility to perform and show the due diligence and carefulness for providing their patients with optimal care. Employment and implementation of quality management concepts and applications in health care business can benefit administration and doctors by identifying innovative ways that can help improve internal systems and processes in the organization and eventually promote more quality outcomes for the patients.

The role of quality management system in healthcare organization is to ensure that patients' requirements are identified and fulfilled in a satisfactory manner. There are different customer needs according to the time which requires a periodic review of the quality requirements. In health care industry, it is important for all customers (patients) to be aware with quality issues. Customer who buys a health care service has certain expectations in their minds which are determined by several factors such as intended use, form and performance which might affect each of them. If health care provision and service are meeting the expectations of the patients, he or she will be satisfactorily pays for it with an intention to visit the healthcare setting again if same or similar health care problem occurs. Customers' buying intent is the derivative of his/her satisfaction with the service she received which is a derivative of quality service provision on the part of health care setting. In this assignment we have analyzed “Acme Hospital” in terms of quality management. Acme Hospital is a London based Hospital (Foster et al., 2011).

Literature Review

Characteristics of Quality Management

Product and service quality is a key factor in any decision because it makes it easier for the customer to choose the right product or service. In industries other than health care such as healthcare provider, buyers can request samples from potential suppliers and then the process of inspection and examination takes place. In some situations, buyers face a position of getting forced to send technical experts to assess quality management systems. This practice is not possible in the health care industry because patients cannot request samples of a ...