A model for measuring effectiveness of quality management practices in health care

Abstract

Purpose Health care is an example of an organization where the needs of potential clients are much greater than the capabilities of the service delivery system. The implementation of any medical procedure, as well as the provision of any service, just like the manufacturing of any product, can be decomposed into a series of tasks. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for measuring the effectiveness of quality assurance tasks in health-care delivery processes. Design/methodology/approach The authors analyze a system of factors that affect the implementation of tasks in a process. In their considerations, they have focused on four areas of science that describe conditions that are related to the implementation of tasks: Scheduling as a methodology for allocating resources to perform tasks; Capacity planning as a methodology for assigning values to given resources expressed by the number of tasks that can be executed with the resources; Queueing theory, used as a methodology for describing phenomena in which not all planned tasks are performed within the prescribed specification limits; and Quality management, as a methodology to ensure appropriate conditions for completing tasks (CCTs), where CCT is a representation of parameters of casual relationship between variables. Findings The authors show that the effectiveness of executing any scheduled tasks in the process is determined by the difference between the capacity of resources allocated (at a given time interval) and the number of tasks planned to be carried out at that time. The CCT conditions determine the level of capacity of the fixed amount of resources. It is shown that their deviation from the reference CCT specification may cause the nominally correct amount of resources be either too small (causing queue formation and longer wait time in hospitals) or too large to contribute to the waste in the system by creating idle capacity. Practical implications The scope of application of the model is wide. It covers tasks performed with different degrees of uncertainties regarding the capacity of resources. It applies in all areas of health care where unlike manufacturing, the services delivered and the tasks performed in the health-care delivery system are seldom identical. Every patient is treated differently than the one waiting next in line. The workloads are pre-arranged in the order they are needed and completed in accordance with the FI-FO (first in-first out) principle. The model presented in this paper makes it possible to better understand the mechanism of effectiveness and efficiency improvement and the role of humans as a specific carrier of capacity. Originality/value As most of the health-care organizations are still stuck in the soft side of quality assurance, there has been little research conducted to test the applicability of well-known productions/operation management methodologies and theories benefitting health-care systems. The formulation of a reference point of CCT in this study is to serve as a stabilizing control point with t...

Ranking model of total quality management enablers in healthcare establishments using the best-worst method

“…It is the responsibility of top-management to provide continuous improvement of quality health service delivery to the patient through effective and efficient patient care and satisfactory medical services that will lead to customer retention and HCE survival (Ali and Alolayyan, 2013). Myszewski and Sinha (2018) found that poor leadership and lack of top-management commitment is one of the major barriers of QM effectiveness assurance. Weak leadership leads to defective products or services delivered and further increases inconsistencies in organization-wide policies and program (Myszewski and Sinha, 2018).…”

“…Myszewski and Sinha (2018) found that poor leadership and lack of top-management commitment is one of the major barriers of QM effectiveness assurance. Weak leadership leads to defective products or services delivered and further increases inconsistencies in organization-wide policies and program (Myszewski and Sinha, 2018). Therefore, successful TQM arises from strong leadership and management efforts aiming to develop and communicate a strategic quality plan, building quality culture, setting quality policies and promoting continuous improvement program in the organization to facilitate employee, customer, supplier, resource and information (Mosadeghrad, 2014).…”

“…They designed an integrated quality model for HCEs and tested it by applying fuzzy set theory on the multiple components of quality criteria with various factors and sub-factors and ID ranking and selection of best HCE among several alternatives. Another study by Myszewski and Sinha (2018) proposed a model for measuring the effectiveness of QM practices in healthcare delivery processes and found that the effectiveness of executing any schedule tasks in the process is determined by the difference between the capacity of resources allocated and the number of tasks planned to be carried out at that time. Chiarini and Baccarani (2016) conducted a study on possibility of implementing TQM and lean strategy together in public healthcare organizations of Italian hospitals.…”

A model for determining the value of patient satisfaction in healthcare

“…Most of the problem identification and problem prioritization can be handled by using Pareto type analysis and its effectiveness can be examined related to the capacity and tasks for process improvement management (Myszewski and Sinha, 2018).…”

“…One of the key premises of this research is the observation that medical services are like improvement micro-projects and that the consideration of value creation (as its measure of effectiveness) can be expressed, among others, using the model presented in Myszewski and Sinha (2018). The value is about providing and making available as many quality attributes as possible to patients within the given cost constraints and the health issue severity constraints.…”