Hospitals are by nature complex organisations and the complexity is compounded in service hospitals with perceived notion of service deficiencies. Quality has emerged as a major issue in health care sector and TQM has been accepted as a major long-term strategic initiative towards continuously improving quality of health care. Key concepts of TQM start with top management leadership with emphasis on process and customer focus. Implementation of TQM in service hospitals will require Quality Management awareness, training and framework development as well as development of customer awareness. TQM has been widely applied in clinical field with successful outcome. TQM is not a short-term solution, it has to be understood and practised as a long-term strategic commitment.
Patient satisfaction is an important outcome measure independent of other outcomes. Its measurement is important to assess the effectiveness of a programme and to gain insight into the patients' perception of the programme. In this stud)' conducted in a large rehabilitation centre it was found that majority of patients express satisfaction with care inspite of perceived discomfort. Various demographic factors, severity or duration of the disability or the level of rehabilitation do not influence patient satisfaction. Patients express more concern with aspects such as delay in issue of the prosthesis, or hotel component of the hospital services. Patients did not appear too concerned about the level of information provided. Patient satisfaction is an individual reaction to the overall care process and is influenced b)' the initial expectation level of the patient. Emotional response of the patient appears to be more important determinant of patient satisfaction than the cognitive evaluation. Periodical assessment of patient satisfaction should be an important component of an)' programme evaluation exercise. MjAFI 2001; 57 : 95-98
The study shows that the rate of inappropriate patient days is quite high among the study population and regular utilization reviews need to be carried out to conserve health care resources available with the service hospitals.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.