Quality management in healthcare is a vital need for all healthcare institution. All healthcare systems should be patient-centric by ensuring the patient always comes first. Healthcare institutions should adopt and implement tools and standards that will ensure that their systems are patient-centric. The concept is of great significance to both the patient and the healthcare industry. Every stakeholder in the industry from support staff to physicians to practitioners should be aware of the significance of quality management in the healthcare industry. The fundamental requirement of quality management is to ensure that the patient is well-taken care off and favorable patient outcomes ( Mosadeghrad & Ferlie, 2016) . For a healthcare institution to achieve such objectives, they should implement various quality processes and systems. Quality management centers are highly dependent on process management. Healthcare organizations should ensure they implement meaningful quality management while complying with industry standards. The essay will evaluate quality management in healthcare organizations.
Role of Quality Management Organization
Quality management in healthcare organizations is based on three principles: teamwork, continuous quality improvement, and customer focus. Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is a concept that encourages healthcare institution to improve systems and concepts continuously. It involves simplification of tasks and finding better techniques for carrying out responsibilities. The healthcare industry has an enormous knowledge base, and they should always be ways of improving how the knowledge is used ( Finkelman, 2015) . For instance, most hospitals and clinicians rely only on their cognitive memory to support decisions. But if they could digitize literature summaries, charts, journals, files, and books about their practice, they could easily improve the information and data that supports decision making.
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Quality managers have a responsibility of providing direction to employees and instilling a customer focused environment while complying with medical quality standards. CQI ensures that the organizations find better methods of serving their clients according to their needs and expectations. All healthcare organizations should find different ways of improving customer service, how they operate, and the overall service to employees and patients. Teamwork includes involving employees in quality improvement. All members of the organization should work as a team rather than delegating all responsibilities to subordinates. The performance of the healthcare industry should not be judged by individual success but by the collective success of all stakeholders ( Finkelman, 2015) . All members of an organization should have overarching purposes that go beyond their individual priorities. Furthermore, all stakeholders should have frequent compliance audits that indicate areas of improvement so that they continuously improve as a team. They can share the findings of the audit with all stakeholders so that every member can have roles in improving their performance.
Educational Needs of Quality Management Organization
Healthcare institutions should establish guiding principles or standards that state their service delivery expectations. Quality management ensures that all stakeholders in the industry learn the guiding principles. The US healthcare field has many legal regulations, and the quality management departments evaluate the status that affects the organization and come up with relevant standards that the organization should adhere to ( Field et al., 2014) . After setting the guiding principles, the organization should focus on monitoring compliance. Compliance is a fundamental concept of quality management because it ensures that patients receive the best care and that the guiding principles are followed. One of the techniques of monitoring compliance is quality audits and it involves checking all documentation against the guiding principles, evaluating the data, and scoring the results.
All the stakeholders should also learn about risk management. Quality management assists in managing, minimizing, and mitigating risks. Risk management is an essential aspect of ensuring patients are safe and that the care does not endanger their safety or health. One of the most common risks in healthcare is prescription medication. Adverse effects, allergic reaction or even fatalities may occur due to a hazardous combination, too many, or not enough medications. The education requirements should involve process improvement. Healthcare institutions can benefit from quality management because it ensures that weak segments are identified via compliance audits ( Cryer, Davis, & Pronovost, 2017) . Weaknesses often hinder growth and success. Quality management efforts are essential because they alert administrators so that they can make the necessary improvements according to the national and international standards. It should also focus on technical assistance. When weaknesses or errors are identified through observations or audits, the quality management group works with the affected employees to improve the situation. They may also require technical assistance training so that all employees in the organization may gain an educational background on issues regarding compliance.
Impact of Quality Management
Patient
Effective quality management ensures that the organization focuses on patients’ needs because they are the clients who judge the efficiency of service and effectiveness of treatments. Although patients’ expectations and needs vary over time, sound quality management should also change according to patients’ satisfaction and progress with the service. The monitoring involves both subjective and objective means such as patient’s opinions regarding the service and medical test results so that they can measure the quality of the treatment approach ( Dodwad, 2013) . The concept ensures patients experience an excellent provision of care. Quality management ensures that healthcare organizations take optimal care of their clients. Medical clinics and hospitals have a responsibility to show their due diligence to quality management by offering the best services to patients. Healthcare organizations should ensure quality management principles are used by administrators, healthcare businesses, and doctors.
Medical Administrators
Quality management ensures that medical administrators acquire the relevant leadership skills. Quality management in healthcare in healthcare organizations needs efficient and close cooperation of diverse people, expertise, and skills. All medical practitioners have a common objective of offering quality service and it can only occur if medical administrators take a lead role. Quality management improves the reliability of medical administrators. One of the fundamental concepts in quality management is providing consistent quality which is entirely dependent on reliable processes. Reliable mechanisms should involve reward systems, performance goals, quality measurement systems, risk reduction procedures, and quality improvement procedures. Medical practitioners should have appropriate quality management systems. The healthcare industry relies on and is highly regulated by state-of-the-art diagnostics systems and technologies ( Field et al., 2014) . Furthermore, healthcare costs are often covered by third parties such as government programs or the insurance company. Therefore, quality management ensures that medical practitioners adapt to the latest technologies, comply with industry standards, and have the necessary skills for applying the relevant technologies.
Comparison of Two Quality Organizations
The Leapfrog Group focuses on the development, dissemination, and execution of similar sets of purchasing guiding principles that promote safety and the entire healthcare value. The group has assembled a large number of healthcare purchasers in the whole country to voluntarily subscribe to certain principles while accommodating the differences in market, geographic, organizational, and demographic factors. The group is funded by certain Fortune 500 companies. The long-term objective of the group is to reward physicians and hospitals according to quality improvement and excellence in quality ( Mosadeghrad & Ferlie, 2016) . However, the objective is hampered by inaccurate public reporting on the comparable clinical performance and inadequate clinical information systems. The interim strategy of the group is to formulate discrete structural features that will yield short-term gains in patient safety. Also, the group is anchored in consumers to make better-informed choices regarding consumer healthcare.
While the Leapfrog Group focuses on setting purchasing principles, the Joint Commission offers standards in global healthcare. Their standards are a fundamental aspect of the objective evaluation of processes. Therefore, the standards set by the Joint Commission assists the Leapfrog group to evaluate whether healthcare organizations comply with industry standards. The standards assist healthcare organizations in measuring, assessing, and improving performance. The standards focus on significant organization functions, and resident, patient, and individual care that are essential when providing high quality and safe care. The standards can set expectations for evaluating organization performances in a way that is measurable, reasonable, and achievable ( Cryer, Davis, & Pronovost, 2017) . The standards are developed with the assistance of government agencies, healthcare professionals, consumers, and subject matter experts. The decisions are then reviewed according to expert consensus, scientific literature, and their board of commissioners. New standards can only be added if they can be accurately measured, relate to the quality of care or patient safety, surpass or meet the law, and have favorable outcomes on the healthcare industry.
Conclusion
The essay evaluates quality management in healthcare organizations. For the success of quality management, the leaders must steer all stakeholders in the right direction. Some of the fundamental causes of failure in quality management include lack of leadership commitment and insufficient support of health professionals. The US needs to improve its approach to quality management because it has fallen behind its global peers over the past two decades. Quality management is an essential issue in the healthcare system. Therefore, it has received increased attention due to hospital management initiatives, government regulations, and influence of customers. However, there are powerful subcultures that hinder implementation of quality management in the country such as physician’s or manager’s subcultures. Each has their perspectives regarding the significance of quality and how it should be done ( Dodwad, 2013) . Therefore, all stakeholders should cooperate for the sake of the customers and the collective success of the entire healthcare industry rather than individual successes.
References
Cryer, D. R., Davis, R. O., & Pronovost, P. J. (2017). Mutual Mentorship: Patient-Partnered Care Starts at the Patient-CEO Level. Quality Management in Healthcare , 26 (1), 49-50.
Dodwad, S. S. (2013). Quality management in healthcare. Indian journal of public health , 57 (3), 138.
Field, J. M., Heineke, J., Langabeer, J. R., & DelliFraine, J. L. (2014). Building the case for quality improvement in the healthcare industry: A focus on goals and training. Quality Management in Healthcare , 23 (3), 138-154.
Finkelman, A. (2015). Leadership and Management in Nursing: Core Competencies for Quality Care . Pearson.
Mosadeghrad, A. M., & Ferlie, E. (2016). Total quality management in healthcare. Management innovations for healthcare organizations: adopt, abandon or adapt , 378-96.
