ifferences in perceptions are important because such comparisons provide insights into strategies that may be employed across cultures to improve health care quality, and because such comparisons identify strengths in one culture that may be applicable in other cultures.
The proposed study will measure and compare perceptions of the quality of delivered health care services in hospital settings in both Brazil and the United States. In each instance also, perceptions of both care providers and hospital patients will be measured.
Literature is reviewed in relation to two key areas related to quality in health care services. These areas are quality control and consumer satisfaction.
Quality control, in order to be effective, must be integrated throughout the production process, whether the output of that process is a good or a service. Thus, a quality control system must be developed or adopted, and that system must be incorporated into the organizational structure (Lester, Enrick, and Mottley, 1991, p. 34). Control procedures must be
established at every stage of the production process.
There are a variety of quality improvement strategies in vogue in the 1990s. Some of these strategies have greater application than do others in the health care environment where the emphasis is on service delivery.
One of those strategies is TQM Total Quality Management (Hammond and DeGeorge, 1991, p. 38). TQM requires the involvement of every facet of an organization's operation and every employee in the effort to promote high product quality. TQM, therefore, tends to produce incremental quality gains, as opposed to dramatic, one shot improvements (Hammond and DeGeorge, 1991, p. 35).
TQM is a logical outgrowth of the quality control strategy promoted for years by the late Edwards Deming. Deming's quality control strategy was developed with manufacturing processes in mind. TQM, however, may be applied in the production of s...