Managing Quality Crossroads in Healthcare: An Integrative Supply Chain Perspective

ABSTRACT

Managing quality in healthcare involves critical decision making at the intersections of multiple supply chain and operations processes. These intersections occur within an interdependent healthcare system, where changes in one part of the system affect another part of the system. Building on an integrated supply chain perspective, the authors develop the concept of “quality crossroads” to explain crucial intersections between quality processes and those related to strategy, purchasing, operations, customer relationship, and logistics processes. These intersections form a network of crossroads in which decisions about quality can create substantial consequences throughout delivery systems. To explore and apply the concept of quality crossroads in healthcare, the authors review and examine research articles related to healthcare quality published in the Quality Management Journal. The authors also explore applications of quality crossroads in the articles found in this special issue on healthcare quality management. They find that existing works on healthcare more frequently address quality crossroads with strategy, operations processes, and customer relationships, but less often address crossroads with sourcing and logistics processes. The authors discuss these implications and propose multiple avenues for examining healthcare quality crossroads.

KEYWORDS:

• Crossroads
• healthcare
• quality management
• supply chains
• systems

Acknowledgments

We thank research assistants Brandon Byers and Austin Schouten.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John W. Gardner

John W. Gardner is assistant professor of global supply chain management and a member of the undergraduate and graduate faculty at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Business. He received his Ph.D. in business administration, management science, from Ohio State University. His research interests include operational improvement and innovation, the interaction of technology and processes, and healthcare quality. His work has appeared in the Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Business Logistics, and Organization Science.

Kevin W. Linderman

Kevin W. Linderman is the Curtis L. Carlson Professor in Supply Chain and Operations at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. He has received National Science Foundation grants to study quality management, knowledge management, and sustaining high performance. He served as an elected officer of Operations Management Division of Academy of Management. Prof. Linderman received a number of scholarly awards including the 2016 Operations Management Scholar Award (Career Award - Academy of Management), 2016 Associate Editor Award Decision Science Journal, 2016 Associate Editor Award Journal of Supply Chain Management, 2015 Carlson School of Management Research Award, Elected officer of Operations Management Division of Academy of Management, 2011 Carlson School of Management Research Award, 2010 Elwood S. Buffa Doctoral Dissertation Award (Co-advisor), 2008 Decision Science Journal Best Paper Award Finalist, 2008 Chan Hahn Best Distinguished Paper Award Finalist, 2006 Elwood S. Buffa Doctoral Dissertation Award (Co-advisor), 2004 Academy of Management Chan K. Hahn Distinguished Paper Award.

Kathleen L. McFadden

Kathleen L. McFadden is a Deans Distinguished Professor of OM&IS at Northern Illinois University. She has received research grants from the Federal Aviation Administration and has served as an expert witness. Dr. McFadden has published over 40 articles in leading academic journals on strategies for reducing errors and improving quality in both healthcare and aviation. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Operations Management, the International Journal of Production Research, and the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, to name a few.