The Relationship Between Quality Management Practices And Hospital Performance

Health care is a service every person needs. It has become one of the fastest growing industries in the service organization in recent years. To face profound changes from both inside and outside, health care sectors have begun to implement effective QM practices following manufacturing and other service industries. Whatever quality management practices hospitals may choose, hospital managers expect a successful implementation and its effect on organizational performance.The impact of QM practices on organizational performance has been the subject of constant interest and challenge among researchers. Numerous empirical studies have attempted to investigate between QM practice and firm performance relationships. However, there is relatively little literature on the development of reliable and valid measurement instruments to assess the implementation of QM practices in hospitals and on QM practices-performance in health care sectors. China is one of the most populous countries in the world. It’s necessary to investigate the relationship between QM practices and hospital performance based on the empirical results from China.Based on the high class quality management practices from manufacturing and other service industries, the paper extends the previous empirical research to the health care sectors and suggests the research framework of QM practices-performance in hospitals. For validation purposes, a cross-sectional survey involving 204 quality managers and directors of 40 large public hospitals was carried out between April and October 2013 in Zhejiang Province, China. Empirical results support that QM implementation can bring many benefits to sample hospitals.The main contributions of the dissertation are:Firstly, the paper extends the previous empirical research from manufacturing and other service industries to the health care sectors and constructs a nine-construct measurement instrument for assessing QM practices. Empirical results support that the instrument developed in this study is reliable and valid. The instrument can help hospital managers to obtain a better understanding of QM practices and to identify the most important areas for quality improvement. It can be used to compare the development of quality management in different hospitals to prioritize quality improvement efforts. Furthermore, the instrument contributes to promoting learning best QM practices from the manufacturing and other service industries.Secondly, it explores the relationship between the constructs of QM practices. Leadership, role of quality department and quality information and analysis are positively related to other constructs. The results could enhance managers’ understanding of different QM activities and implement them successfully.Finally, while few studies have been conducted within the context of health care sectors in developing countries, the dissertation sheds some further light on the relationship between QM practices and hospital performance based on empirical results from Chinese hospitals. It is found that the constructs of employee relations and process management were positively related to healthcare and non-healthcare performance. The empirical results could help mangers to re-allocate more resources to those elements of the quality management systems that have the most significant impact on performance.