Total Quality Management (TQM)
TQM focuses on ensuring that community needs, as well as those of individual clients, are met alongside the organization’s objective. The trust in the Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust (RUH Bath) achieved its goal through the maximization of employees’ potential as the organization sought continued improvement (Gardner et al., 2010). There are several different concepts under TQM including employee involvement, partnership with suppliers and setting performance measures that have been satisfied. Other concepts such as patient satisfaction in RUH Bath have not been achieved as the waiting time for patients is still wanting.
Under TQM, the focus is to ensure that problems are prevented by leveraging on staff members which has not been the case at RUH Bath. The technique also seeks to ensure that the quality of healthcare is improved through education and progressive training of the personnel. The strategy eliminates numerical approaches to quality as well as other barriers that interfere with employee satisfaction (Astbury & Leeuw, 2010).
In TQM, the leadership and the management of the organization purposefully make willing decisions that orient the organization towards achieving patient satisfaction through the employees. For example in the RUH Bath case, the organization’s management focused on implementing the warning notice from the NHS. The leadership of the organization also served as an example by setting strategies that lay emphasis on the improvement of quality (Hughes, 2008). The success of TQM depends heavily on the skills and knowledge of the entire staff force hence requiring that teamwork be established to ensure that the employees synergize their efforts. RUH Bath has not been able to achieve the desired level of cooperation as a result of not having enough skilled labor.
TQM holds the view that all health care operations are a process with inputs and outputs that can be improved to ensure patient satisfaction. The healthcare organizations also need to anticipate any changes in the process and establish necessary strategies. The quality circles also require that new strategies are tested before full adoption.
Continuous Quality Management (CQI)
CQI is a process that involves healthcare staff in the process of improving existing systems to ensure that client’s satisfaction is met. CQI has several concepts that indicate that an organization’s success is achieved by meeting the client’s needs. Thus, when RUH Bath is assessed under CQI, it can be said to have progressed in terms of quality given the fact that the existing issues were tackled rather than focusing on changing the employees (Hughes, 2008). However, it is notable that RUH Bath needs to increase its staffing levels as well as provide more training on handling children.
CQI holds that an organization should focus on reducing burdensome processes while at the same time adopting procedures that guarantee the desired results in a smooth manner. The staff are bound to accept any changes in the system if they are made aware of the expected outcomes (Jha & Epstein, 2010). Further problems can be averted by testing the proposed changes through piloting them on a regulated number of patients.
Hughes (2008) argues that the organizational leadership under CQI is responsible for setting the direction towards quality. A healthcare leader, who intends to align the staff with the goal of ensuring patient satisfaction through meeting their expectations, must motivate and steer the team towards the identified goal. The organization’s leadership is also responsible for aligning the entire staff with the organization’s culture that should be embedded in the principles of CQI.
The process of CQI begins with providing quality training to the employees on the importance of the process and the expected outcomes. The organization is required to ensure that there is a continued collection of the necessary data as well as analysis. In the case of RUH Bath, the hospital needs to improve reporting of incidents so that the staff can learn from their mistakes.
List of References
Astbury B & Leeuw F 2010, ‘Unpacking Black Boxes: Mechanisms and Theory Building in Evaluation. American Journal of Evaluation, vol. 31, pp. 363-381.
Gardner K, Dowden M, Togni S & Bailie R 2010, ‘Understanding uptake of continuous quality improvement in Indigenous primary health care: lessons from a multi-site case study of the Audit and Best Practice for Chronic Disease project.
Hughes, R 2008, Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville Implement Science, vol. 5, pp. 21.
Jha, A., & Epstein, A 2010. Hospital Governance and the Quality of Care. Health Affairs vol. 29, no.1, pp.182–187