Health Care Organization
And Delivery Mt371 Unit 9
Final Project
By
QUALITY HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Quality as a means of creating and sustaining a competitive advantage has been widely adopted by both public and private sector organizations ( 1999). In the healthcare system recent decades have observed a remarkable changes even an evolution in the quality management in the healthcare system, (, 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 (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 different factors or driving forces that influence the quality improvement of healthcare management. The factors include the emergence of information technologies and information systems, customer or patient satisfaction, increasing healthcare costs, demand for quality form purchasers of healthcare, variations in patterns of care, the existence of managed care, the emergence and growth of healthcare industries devoted to healthcare quality, ensuring quality service, gaining competitive advantage and, having effective management system .
Driving Forces for 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 factors that have been mentioned above are not independent from each other. These factors are integrated to establish a powerful force
Emergence of Information Technologies and Information System
The complexities of achieving management success through increased efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness, combined with innovative applications of modern technology, has heightened the awareness of both Technology and organizational managers towards more strategically oriented approaches for planning and management of any industry ( 1993).
The existence of information technologies can e considered as an important aspects that cuts across all other elements that have influenced changes into the quality management of healthcare. In this manner, the advancement of information technologies and information systems, as well as communications systems and computer technologies made it easier, cheaper and faster for those people involved in healthcare to accumulate and assess multiple types of information (1997).
Furthermore, the emergence of the internet has been able to allow patients to become perceptive customers of healthcare. In this manner, patients who have become well informed or probably misinformed thru the internet medical sources have become a major influence to change the physician-patient relationship. Since, patients are more informed of different facts about healthcare, they are able to question the decisions of the attending physicians based upon the details on their diseases which was previously unavailable to the average patient. In addition, thru this, the patient is able to gather data on the performance of healthcare givers, efficiently handling one aspect of healthcare quality responsibility to the patients.
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 organizations 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. (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 ( 1994; 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, (2004) stated: “Loyalty behaviors, 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” 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” ( 2004,).
Accordingly, patient satisfaction is the cognitive assessment or judgment of an emotional reaction to the provided healthcare service ( 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.
Increasing healthcare costs
Just like information technologies, the healthcare cost is also a common interconnected theme among the driving forces which led to the change of healthcare management in terms of improving the quality of the service. The demand for controlling cost ahs come from the major payers of healthcare which compose of government and the employers. In the phase of aging customers which will avail a larger proportion of the federal budget as beneficiaries of Medicare benefits, the national government has an interest in cost control. In addition, the evolution of global market competitions, more employers’ desire cost control as an effective way to reduce the cost of products and services that they give. From this notion, the variability of the healthcare services delegates’ suboptimal quality and the likelihood of overuse or sometimes misuse of such services, hence, improving quality of the healthcare management can reduce cost (1999).
Demand for Quality from Purchasers of healthcare,
The government and national authorities, with the existence of medical insurances became actively involved in analyzing the details of medical and healthcare practices ( 1997). Due to the concept of cost-containment and quality assurance, national health authorities have formed different types of agencies to address healthcare management quality ( 2000). Similarly, other established purchasers of healthcare services like unions and employers, have paid more attention with population-based measures of quality and measuring performance of the healthcare system. In this manner, purchases are utilizing such measures to examine the performance of healthcare plans and the also the providers ( 1996). Responsibility for quality of the purchasers in line with the healthcare management is now a certainty.
With the existence of industries which adheres to the notion of quality management, other healthcare providers are trying to adapt such concept to ensure that their management system will be effective.
Variations in Patterns of Care
In the emergence pf the quality management techniques were flourishing in other economic sectors, the healthcare organization has shown patterns of variability of patient care showing the medical decisions made by physicians or healthcare workers depends more on the resources which came from local institutions and on existing local styles than on the context of science (, 1998). In lieu with the increasing healthcare costs, such variability was not only regarded to be a sign of varying quality, but also an indicator of insignificant practices. This influence the realization of the healthcare authorities to imposed a quality healthcare management system.
Existence of Managed Care
The notion of managed care has increased in large part due to increasing demands to contain costs. The managed care industries use several approaches to contain costs and many of these mechanisms give emphasis on the reduction of overused resources of healthcare (, 2004). The consequence of the style has been concern that the uses of healthcare services can be lessen to the point that the quality of care is reduced. Since the existence of managed care has become well-known, there also exist some public concerns regarding the idea of whether the managed care is delivering care that is expected by individuals ( 1998). The existence of the notion of managed care had pushed healthcare organizations to streamline their management system and adhere to the needs of having quality healthcare management.
Emergence and Growth of Accrediting Bodies Devoted to Healthcare Quality
Another factor that influences healthcare providers to implement quality management is the emergence and growth of accrediting bodies in healthcare. In response of healthcare management to the public concern about quality of care provided in managed care organization and to the assumption that the government and national health authorities might soon develop another institution that would monitor healthcare providers, different nations have developed accrediting agencies. These agencies are responsible for inspecting a certain healthcare providers to determine if such provider executes quality management. Realizing that the assessment of accrediting agencies is important for the organization, many healthcare providers adhere to the needs of imposing quality management in healthcare.
Ensuring Quality Service
According to (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 (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 (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.
Gaining Competitive Advantage
Winning s strategies such as the utilization of quality management approach are grounded in sustainable competitive advantage. It is said that a healthcare organization has competitive advantage whenever it has an edge over its competitors in attracting customers and defending against competitive forces. Competitive advantage is derived from external factors or positional advantage and internal factors or resources and assets used. The latter is the effect of the competencies of the firm (1991).
Thus, a definition of competitive advantage might be: competitive advantage is a measure of the ability of the company to deliver value to the customer or patients divided with the resources used relative to the competitors. This measure of competitive advantage is not an operational measure and should not be taken as such. However, it does focus attention on two different issues that must be seen in connection in quality management: the position enjoyed by the healthcare organization and the internal competencies of the firm, which together form the basis for judging the competitive advantage of the firm. Evidently, both measures must be taken relative to the competitors of the company (1985).
Any firm is interested in competitive advantage; actually it may be said to be the very purpose of quality management, especially if the advantage proves to be sustainable. (1995, ) defines this as, “…companies have sustainable competitive advantage when they consistently produce service systems with attributes which correspond to the key buying criteria for the majority of customers in their targeted market…” Thus, if a company has sustainable competitive advantage, customers will prefer its product offerings to those of the competition; that is, external and internal productivity will be greater than that of other firms in the targeted market.
Having effective management system
Lastly, it is said that healthcare organizations tries to utilize a quality management healthcare system because they want to initiate an effective management system which will be helpful in adhering to quality assurance. The implementation of the concept of quality assurance enables the health care system determine the focus of work, directions and content of healthcare activities and the cost effectiveness priorities of the person involved. The need of the healthcare system may be determined in a variety of ways but typically through the judicious use of focus groups using rapid appraisal techniques or through standard questionnaires as assessment instruments. QA can be built into the needs assessment strategy by developing post-intervention methods that rely on, for example, critical incident techniques. This allows members of the community to assess explicitly whether a health care programme has met and satisfied the identified need. This application of QA to the process of an interventions life has to have standards in order to measure the quality. These standards, which should be quantifiable, need to provide a precise indication of consistency. They should initially be based on best existing practice with the cooperation of practitioners, and have a temporal dimension which allows them to improve over time. Standards can be sub-divided into criteria and indicators, depending on how precise the QA process is to be.
Conclusion
The factors or driving forces mentioned above are just some of the influencing factors that influence healthcare industries to apply and implement the concept of quality healthcare management system. Whatever the techniques employed by the healthcare organization does not matter as long as such technique adheres to the needs of quality assurance.
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