In this increasingly competitive environment with ever increasing demand and decreasing resource, service quality improvement is often a key competitive differentiator that is sustainable. Competitive differentiation based on patient care is hard to sustain. There is extensive research to demonstrate that services rated highly for quality by their users grow faster and are more profitable than businesses rated low. Good quality actually saves money.
- Identifying and confirming client requirements and identifying problems and opportunities in meeting these.
- Tools for understanding processes, e.g. process modeling, pareto charts, cause and effect diagrams, flow charts
- Measurement tools; performance dashboards, quality audits etc
- Calculating the "cost of quality" which, in turn, identifies cost reduction opportunities
- Improvement Planning through teams and planning tools such as Gantt charts and other project planning techniques.
Useful tools in the process:
4 Healths’ approach to quality improvement is to use tried and tested approaches specifically targeted at our clients situation:
- EFQM Excellence Framework
- Process mapping
- Six Sigma Process improvement approaches
- Quality Circles
- Root cause analysis
- Lean methodologies
The outcomes of quality improvement may include:
- Improved clinical outcomes
- Streamlined patient pathways and business processes
- Improved patient/service user satisfaction
- Reduction in waste and duplication
- Greater service resilience
- Improved demand management
Last Updated on Thursday, 23 September 2010 08:09
What customers think...
Lynda Jones
Sandwell PCT