Quality Management in Military Health Care

This paper describes and supports a proposal for a research study of the application of quality management techniques in the military health care environment. Included in this chapter are a discussion of the background information on the problem to be investigated; a statement of the problem that will be investigated; a statement of the purpose of the proposed study; a discussion of the rational basis for the conduct of the proposed study; a statement of the research questions that will be investigated, together with a statement of the hypotheses that will be tested; operational definitions of variable terms included in the hypotheses; a statement of the assumptions underlying the proposed study, together with limitations associated with the proposed research; and a description of the organization of the remainder of the proposed study.

Dynamic change characterizes the American health care delivery environment in the 1990s. Within such an environment, institutional care providers in particular must develop and implement new and effective strategies if they are to remain viable entities.

The changes in the health care delivery environment result from a combination of factors (increasing costs of health care, changing societal values, advances in treatment therapies, changing demographics, and many others). Cost is a major factor involved in changes in the delivery of health care servi

Related Essays

Questionnaire on Quality Management Techniques .... questionnaire is being administered as a part of a research study of the application of quality management techniques in the military health care environment. .... (836 3 )

National Health Care Reform NATIONAL HEAL .... Systems support cost accounting and quality of care. .... Utilization management. .... The strange career of managed competition: From military failure to medical success .... (1302 5 )

Kruskal Wallis Test were nominal in character. The Kruskal Wallis .... The goals of such measurement were the identification of perceptions of the role of quality management in military health care delivery settings, and the .... (2190 9 )

Management Concepts 1990, pp. 242 246). Su .... The goals of such measurement were the identification of perceptions of the role of quality management in military health care delivery settings, and the .... (3975 16 )

Quality Control System .... The goals of such measurement were the identification of perceptions of the role of quality management in military health care delivery settings, and the .... (5189 21 )

get higher levels of patient satisfaction (Holleran, 1992, p. 4). Patient satisfaction is best attained through addressing patient needs (Koska, 1992, p. 50). Continuous Quality Improvement CQI is based on the work of Genichi Taguchi (1987, p. 5). Taguchi was the principal developer of the CQI concept. Taiichi Ohno, former vicepresident of Toyota Motor Corporation, was quoted as saying that: "Whatever an executive thinks the losses of poor quality are, they are actually six times greater" (Taguchi and Clausing, 1990, p. 65). Quality is achieved primarily through design, because quality "is a virtue of design" (Taguchi and Clausing, 1990, p. 65). Customers are not interested in the extent to which a product meets production specifications (Taguchi and Clausing, 1990, p. 65). Thus, the "zero defects" approach to quality employed by most American manufacturers fails to address directly the concerns of the customer (Taguchi and Clausing, 1990, p. 65). By contrast with meeting production specifications, the customer is interested in product quality as quality is reflected in "a product's . . . performance when rapped, overloaded, dropped, and splashed" (Taguchi and Clausing, 1990, p. 65). The Taguchi approach to product quali

Category: Medical - Q