Reference no: EM132724391

BUS401 Quality Management

Problem Solving: Memorial Hospital

Memorial Hospital is a privately owned 600-bed facility located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The hospital provides a broad range of health care services, including complete laboratory and X-ray facilities, an emergency room, an intensive care unit, a cardiac care unit, and a psychiatric ward. Most of these services are provided by several other hospitals in the Cincinnati metropolitan area. In fact, Memorial has purposely avoided getting involved in any specialized fields of medicine or obtaining very specialized diagnostic equipment because it was felt that such services would not be cost-effective. The Cincinnati General Hospital, located only a few miles away, is affiliated with the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine and offers up-to-date services in those specialized areas. Instead of trying to compete with Cincinnati General on the basis of special services, Memorial Hospital has concentrated on offering high-quality general health care at an affordable price. Compared with the much larger Cincinnati General, Memorial stresses close personal attention to each patient from a nursing staff that cares about its work. In fact, the hospital has begun placing ads in newspapers and on television, stressing its patient-oriented care.

However, the hospital's administrator, Janice Fry, is concerned about whether the hospital can really deliver on its promises and worries that failure to provide the level of health care patients expect could end up driving patients away. Janice met recently with the hospital's managerial personnel to discuss her concerns. The meeting raised some questions about how the hospital's quality of health care could be assured. Jessica Morton, director of nursing, raised the question, "How do we measure the quality of health care? Do we give patients a questionnaire when they leave, asking whether they were happy here? That doesn't seem to get at the question since we could make a patient happy, but really give them lousy health care." Several other questions came up concerning the hospital's efforts to keep costs down. Some people were concerned that an emphasis on costs would be detrimental to quality. They argued that when a person's life is at stake, costs should not be of concern.

After the meeting, Janice began thinking about these questions. She remembered reading recently that total quality management (TQM) is being used by some companies to improve their quality. She thought that had a nice ring to it-if only the idea could be used in a hospital.

Answer all the following questions:

1. Discuss some ways that a hospital might measure quality.

2. Are there any ideas or techniques from TQM that could be used by Janice to help Memorial focus on providing quality health care?