Measuring Quality
Introduction
Quality as a means of creating and sustaining a competitive advantage has been widely adopted by both public and private sector organisations (Frangou et al., 1999). In the healthcare system recent decades have observed a remarkable changes even an evolution in the quality management in the healthcare system, (Millenson, 1997). Before such revolution, the quality assurance of care had been assessed by professional evaluation, most often this is done in a subjective manner on individual patients (Iglehart, 1996). However, the accountability for quality in healthcare is no longer in the exclusive reality of physicians. The national health authorities, governmental agencies as well as accrediting bodies and other institutions are staking a claim to improve the quality of the healthcare system. The main goal of this paper is to discuss the approaches on how to measure quality of health care through the factors or driving forces that influence the quality improvement of healthcare management.
Measuring Quality: Healthcare Management
The current preoccupation with quality assurance is symptomatic of a far wider concern with modern management methods and contemporary management speaks and their application to the health care field. This has, in part, been driven by the relatively new competitive and contractual climate in health care delivery and in part by the need to provide effective and efficient services and programmes. The approach to measure quality includes the measurement of the satisfaction of the patients and the consideration of the quality service as indicators.
Customer or Patient Satisfaction
With the occurrences of changes in both methods and modalities of healthcare management, patients nowadays perceive a number of plausible medical options beyond conventional medicine. Progressively, insurance organisations are willing to take the expenses of non-traditional healthcare system. With this, patients are given the chance to choose medical practices in healthcare environment. Hence, it is important that satisfactions are given to these patients. Patients’ satisfaction is similar to any form of customer satisfaction. Rust and Subramanian (1992) stated that customer satisfaction has been deemed directly to affect customer retention and companies’ market share.
In addition, there are researchers who discuss the links between satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability (Heskett et al, 1994; Anderson & Fornell, 1994). They are proponents of the theory called service management, which argues that “customer satisfaction is the result of a customer’s perception of the value received in a transaction or relationship relative to the value expected from transactions or relationships with competing providers. Pertaining to this theory, Hansemark and Albinsson (2004) stated: “Loyalty behaviours, including relationship continuance, increased scale or scope of relationship, and recommendation (word of mouth advertising) result from customers’ beliefs that the quantity of value received from one service is greater than that available from other service providers” (p.28). They continued: “Loyalty, in one or more of the forms noted above, creates increased profit through enhanced revenues, reduced costs to acquire customers, lower customer-price sensitivity, and decreased costs to serve customers familiar with a firm’s service delivery system” (Hansemark & Albinsson, 2004, p.28).
Accordingly, patient satisfaction is the cognitive assessment or judgment of an emotional reaction to the provided healthcare service (Fitspatrick, 1993). Furthermore, satisfied patients represent the notion to which a patient has received quality service. If patients are not satisfied with the service, they decide to seek the services of another healthcare provider. Hence, the healthcare community has a vested interest in increasing the satisfaction of patients thru the use of the quality healthcare management.
Ensuring Quality Service
As mentioned by Bethke et al (1994), implementing a quality management system has become the preferred approach for improving quality and productivity in different organizations including the healthcare organizations. The concept of quality management, which has been adopted by different healthcare organizations, is a participative system empowering all employees to take responsibility for improving quality within the organization (Bethke et al, 1994). Instead of using traditional bureaucratic rule enforcement, quality management calls for a change in the corporate culture, where the new work climate has the following characteristics: an open, problem-solving atmosphere; participatory design making; trust among all employees (healthcare workers, managers); A sense of responsibility for goal achievement and problems solving; and, self-motivation and self-control by all healthcare workers and providers (Bethke et al, 1994). The quality management approach involves more than simply meeting traditional rejection rate standards. The end result of quality management within healthcare system is the efficient and effective use of all organizational processes in providing consistent quality to make the patients and consumers satisfied.
Reference
Anderson, E. W. and C. Fornell (1994) “A customer satisfaction research prospectus.” In Service Quality: New Directions in Theory and Practice. Eds R. T. Rust and R. L. Oliver (pp. 241-268). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Bethke, L.A., Clinton, R.J. and Williamson, S. (1994). Implementing Total Quality Management: The Role of Human Resource Management. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 59 (2).
Frangou, A.J., Antony, J. Kaye, M.M. and Wan, Y. (1999) Towards a case-based intelligent system for competitive advantage, accepted for publication in The New Review of Applied Expert Systems, Vol. 5.
Hansemark, O.C. & Albinsson, M. (2004). Customer satisfaction and retention: the experiences of individual employees. Managing Service Quality, 14(1): 40-57.
Heskett, J.L., Jones, T.O., Loveman, G.W., Sasser, W.E. Jr & Schlesinger, L.A. (1994), Putting the service profit chain to work. Harvard Business Review, March-April, pp. 105-11.
Millenson, M. L. (1997). Demanding medical excellence: Doctors and accountability in the information age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rust, R.T. & Subramanian, B. (1992), “Making complaints a management tool’’, Marketing Management, 1(3): 41-5
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