BUS 644 Week 2 Assignment

Case Study: Memorial Hospital

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A hospital such as Memorial Hospital may measure quality by assessing the treatments and procedures used at the facility. The hospitals quality will be considered good depending on whether the right treatments and procedures are used on the patients. The valid and reliable measures of quality may be chosen and focus given to those that can be compared to data from government and other national organizations. An example that could be used as a treatment and procedure measure is the percentage of patients suffering from Human Immune Virus (HIV) and who were tested for (Tuberculosis) TB and other opportunistic infections. The Data is necessary for measure because studies have shown that more than 50 percent of HIV patients die as a result of TB and other opportunistic infections (Hakes & Pera International, 1991).

The other way of measuring quality that the hospital could use is the assessment of the success of the treatments and procedures given to patients. The outcomes as a result of the treatments and care patients receive at the hospital are an important measure of the hospital’s quality. That may however be difficult to determine due to the fact that patients are different. There are some patients whose age allows for quick recovery, whereas elderly patients may take more time to recover. The patients’ immunity may also make it difficult to determine quality using this way since the rate of a patient’s recovery is dependent upon their immunity system. An example of outcome measures that the hospital could use is such as how many patients develop an infection after undergoing surgery at the hospital.

The potential costs associated with quality that Memorial Hospital is likely to incur is that of the hospitals involvement in specialized fields of medicine and obtaining specialized diagnostic equipments. The cost may be incurred despite the hospital’s purposeful avoidance of getting involved in the specialized medicine and diagnostic equipments, if quality is to be achieved. Through specialized diagnostics, the patient’s illnesses or sickness will be detected in the early stage and that will cause effective and efficient treatment. With such specialized diagnostic techniques, the patients will likely receive satisfactory outcomes upon their visit to the Memorial Hospital. If the effective specialized diagnostic techniques are not embraced as it is the hospital’s purpose, the quality of the hospital is likely to be a failure. The costs can be measured by using cost accounting techniques to come up with the most cost effectiveness of embracing the technique (Hakes & Pera International, 1991).

Janice could use a number of techniques from Total Quality Management (TQM) to help Memorial Hospital focus on providing quality health care. The hospital’s management could use active management participation through commissioning of steering committees. The committees should focus on continuous effort to improve the health care provision. Cross-functional teams that will be responsible for addressing immediate quality issues could be formed. The quality issues that are identified in comparison to the projections should then be tackled and adjustments made to improve on the quality.

The Hospital could adapt the usage of the seven basic tools of quality. The seven tools which are cause and effect diagram, check sheet, control chart, Pareto chart, Histogram, scatter diagram and flow charts could be useful in providing focus on quality health care. The tools are graphical techniques which are helpful in finding the problems on issues that are related to quality. With the tools, the hospital will be able to find out the cause of the quality issues and develop solutions to the improvement of quality.

The methods that Memorial could use to assess the quality of health care that it is providing to its clients are: Recordings and reports made by the supervisors, special studies of health service provision, carrying out patient surveys and household surveys. Assessment carried out through recording and reporting by the supervisors, may bring out the organizations level of quality. The reports bring out important information such as the organization’s compliance of the manpower allocation with the national standards of staffing and the maintenance of the building and its adequacy.

The routine reports on the healthcare activities normally include quality items. For instance, the number of average consultations per patient is determined. Through the data collected from the reports, the level of quality is likely to be known, and improvement plans made (Donabedian, 2003). From the data, the approach will be readjusted and a better approach embraced.

Assessment done through questionnaires could be useful in the assessment of the human and interpersonal aspect of health care quality. The quality of service offered at the facility will easily be identified through the patients from their response to questions such as whether the doctors asked them questions concerning their complaints, how detailed the doctor were in their prescription, whether they took time to give advice and whether the treatment made them feel any better. Through the community surveys, the information on the hospitals performance in terms of quality may also be determined (Donabedian, 2003).

Reference

Donabedian, A. (2003). An introduction to quality assurance in health care. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hakes, C., & Pera International. (1991). Total quality management: The key to business improvement. London: Chapman & Hall.