Quality management system for health care and its effectiveness

Abstract

The complexity and importance of teamwork in health care demand drastic improvement in the existing methodology of quality assurance. There is a need to develop a quality management system (QMS) for the healthcare sector. The purpose of this paper is to propose and to verify the effectiveness of the quality-centred management system for healthcare (QMS-H) model in providing safe and reliable health care at the organisational level. This paper presents the QMS-H model derived through an analogy with the QMS model applied in the manufacturing industry and modified according to the features of the healthcare sector, and we discuss the form it should assume and the necessary type of body of knowledge (BOK). We are trying to implement the model in several hospitals in a QMS-H research group, and we are also trying to verify the effectiveness of the model in the research group. At present, the basic foundations of QMS-H have been laid, and many hospitals have now obtained the ISO 9001 certification. Some hospitals have launched policy management and improvement at the organisational level. Since some management indices have been improved, the effectiveness of the model has been suggested.

Keywords:

• quality management system for health care
• total quality management framework
• QMS-H research group
• policy management

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous assistance of the members of the QMS-H research group.