Towards a Triadic Quality Measurement Framework for U.S. Healthcare

ABSTRACT

Although there are various measures of healthcare quality, such as those used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an inclusive perspective that considers the patient, the hospital's external and internal relationships, and the nodal organizations is missing. Medical practitioner comments from the authors' interactions, coupled with the findings from their literature review, have motivated the authors to suggest that healthcare quality should be measured using a triadic approach. In this study, the authors offer an overarching conceptual framework for measuring quality in the U.S. healthcare system that utilizes a triadic approach integrating various aspects of quality at three different levels of measurement. At the micro-level, the focus is on patients–admitted and treated–and their perceptions of a hospital's service as well as outcomes. The authors suggest measures related to the healthcare teamwork quality at the meso-level. At the macro- level, in which the organization interacts with external entities, the focus is on the measurement of hospital quality performance. The authors conclude with the managerial implications of the framework and suggest future directions for triadic healthcare quality measurement.

KEYWORDS:

• patient care quality
• triadic approach
• systems thinking
• U.S. healthcare

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Subhajit Chakraborty

Subhajit Chakraborty, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Management and Decision Sciences in the E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration at Coastal Carolina University. Dr. Chakraborty holds a B.E. degree in Chemical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India, a P.G.D.M. (MBA) from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, India, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration with a focus on operations management from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Subhajit is a practitioner turned academic with 11 years of experience in operations, supply chain and information technology domains with experience as an expatriate. He is a certified PMP since 2003 and a member of American Society for Quality. His research interests include service quality along firms' supply chain, services design, outsourcing and lean healthcare operations. Subhajit received the Best Student Paper award in the DSI 2015 conference and later his dissertation research won the Emerald/EFMD's Highly Commended Award in Operations Management category.

Hale Kaynak

Hale Kaynak, Ph.D. is a Professor of Operations Management in The Robert C. Vackar College of Business & Entrepreneurship at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Dr. Kaynak has a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from Yildiz University, Turkey, an MBA from Appalachian State University, and a Ph.D. in Production and Operations Management from the University of North Texas. She is the author of Total Quality Management and Just-in-Time Purchasing: Their Effects on Performance of Firms Operating in the U.S. and publishes regularly in refereed scholarly journals such as the Journal of Operations Management and the International Journal of Operations and Production Management among others. Her research has been funded by the American Society for Quality and the Institute for Supply Management. She has been serving on the editorial boards of scholarly journals in the field of operations management. She has also served in various leadership capacities in the professional organizations. Her current research interests include sustainability, health care operations, supply chain management, quality management, lean operations, performance measurement, empirical research, and replication research.