Institute for Continuing Education

Continuous Quality Improvement in Healthcare

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:

• Define Quality Control: what it is and what it is not.
• TQM defined as a management tool to increase understanding of one¹s operation and to increase efficiency.
• CQI as a motivational and team development tool leading to improved economics.
• Show how to gain cooperation in building information about the business.
• Show how traditional management styles like "delegation of authority," "walk about," etc can revolve around quality issues and initiatives.
• Illustrate how audits, benchmarking, and other tools are used in critical assessment.
• Demonstrate how to change current management styles through quality protocols.
• Show how Quality relates to economics: quality is everyone¹s job, including managers, and defines everyone¹s job, including managers.
• Define barriers to implementing a quality improvement program.

Course Information

There are many traditional management styles that are incomplete. Most lack the ability to develop teamwork and the increasing quality levels that result in increased profitability. If they focus on people they often default on profit. If they are dictatorial and focus only on profit, they lose.

Quality Control (QC), Total Quality Management (TQM) and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) are basically one and the same: an economic tool. These programs have long been thought to be strictly "technical" management tools for the use of maintaining the technical side of the business. These programs and their originators (Deming, Juran, Shewhart, etc) always intended for the programs to be a guide to managers. Indeed, they insist that for the program to work, the managers must first be fully trained in the subject and the processes. These Quality programs, tools, strategies, etc work whether the business is making "things" or simply moving paper around. They can and should be applied to every product and every job. They are based on surveys, tests, and numbers rather than personalities. They make managing easier. For instance, everyone dreads an audit. Anything can be audited but the first rule is: processes are audited; never a person working the process. If there are people problems, maybe there is a flawed process causing the problem. Fix the problem and keep the people.

Managers will benefit, as will their teams, from using Quality tools to run their departments and their business. This course will show managers, present and future, tools to make their jobs easier. It will discuss how to make better decisions and to build rapport without giving away control. The department will improve in attitude, performance, and profitability. Everyone will operate at a lower frustration level and will enjoy work more, which will lead to better medicine.

This course is designed to show how Quality initiatives can aid managers and not to teach the complete aspects of these various subjects.

There are the traditional forms of management, which most of us grew to hate as we endured our supervisors and their enlightened whims. We all can relate to the plight of Dilbert, the cartoon engineer, who constantly fights a losing battle with his thickheaded boss.

For most of us, there has been an occasional good manager who helped us grow. Most of the less good management styles are the result of a lack of training for the manager. This leads to fear, "protect one¹s backside," and other psychosis. It would be better for the manager, and much better for his/her subordinates, to have a scientific approach to management. This approach is un-burdened by emotional, "knee jerk reactions," and historical, "we have always done it that way!" barriers to progress. A scientific method is based on quality tools used to gather factual data upon which the decisions can be made. It requires input, and therefore, involvement by the "troops." This builds "espirit de corps" or teamwork.

The focus is on processes, productivity, quality, and waste. The manager worries less about personalities or trying to manage them. It advocates self-management with leadership. Quality tools found in Total Quality Management (TQM), Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), and even basic Quality Control (QC) can all be used by a manager to manage better. By their nature, they create leaders, not dictators. They develop teamwork and consensus. They foster a happy, positive work environment.

The objective of this course is not to teach you how to use the various quality tools, but to show how they can be used to help you manage better and how to become a better manager.