The application of TQM in a hospital’s casualty and pathology departments

Introduction To be successful in the long term, an organization must produce quality goods or services. Quality is the value of goods or service as perceived by the customer. In recognition of these realities, good managers will establish a set of quality management principles that focuses on customer satisfaction and continuous improvement in the organization’s processes. This set of principles is known as total quality management (TQM)[1]. Although the details may vary, the same TQM principles and concepts can be, and have been, successfully applied across enterprise types[2]. Generally, manufacturing enterprises have been leaders in TQM applications, and service firms have rapidly followed this lead. An exception has been the health-care organization[3]. In health care, quality monitoring has focused on individual performance and decision making. Historically, quality assurance methodologies embellished the theory of the “bad apple” or of finding the individual with a pattern of less than optimal care outcomes. In recent years, the cost of health care has become a major concern, and competition surfaced as a significant factor for health-care providers. These providers began to realize that customer (patient, family, physician, insurer and employee) satisfaction would be a major determinant for survival in the newly competitive marketplace. The health-care industry began to examine TQM and the success stories of the manufacturing and service industries. Although TQM may be in various stages of implementation throughout health care, the entire industry has embraced the concept. In addition, the Joint