A consensus support model based on linguistic information for the initial-self assessment of the EFQM in health care organizations

The improvement of the quality of the services is one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in health care organizations. As customers typically search for higher quality of care when choosing treatments, health plans and providers, the health care organizations strive to improve the quality of care and patient safety and satisfaction, as primary goals, with the resources that are available. To do so, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model for self-assessment has been used by the health care organizations to improve their services and their competitiveness in the global market. However, when the health care organizations address self-assessment processes for the first time, the initial effort needed presents many difficulties. The aim of this paper is to offer a consensus support model based on linguistic information to conduct the self-assessment of the EFQM Excellence Model when questionnaires are used. It is based on the use of linguistic information to provide the individuals’ opinions, which facilitates the individual responses, and on the use of fuzzy majority, represented by means of a linguistic quantifier, to compute the measures guiding the consensus reaching process. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.