Essay Sample on WFRMC's Strategic Decision to Invest in CQI

Introduction

Various strategic reasons made WFRMC decide on investing in TQM. One of the strategic reasons was the need by WFRMC to increase the number of staff in CQI (Ahn, Carter, Reiman, & Hartzel, 2016. This is because there was only a single employee, Ms. Bettte, the director of Quality Improvement Resources. She was overwhelmed with the task since she had to work both as a coach and a staff. Furthermore, there was a need to enhance quality and productivity in the entire aspects of the organization (Ahn et al., 2016). This was an idea that was borrowed from the TQM of the Pensacola Area Chamber of Commerce, which one of the organization's CEO, John Kausch, was a member. These thus ware some of the reasons that made WFRMC decide on investing in TQM.

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How the Program Undertaken at WFRMC Reflects this Strategic Impetus

The program that was undertaken by the WFRMC reflects on the strategic impetus since it was undertaken and controlled by the influential top management, John Kausch. Moreover, John Kausch took his management team members to benchmark on other quality exemplars like the local plants of the Monsanto and Westinghouse (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2018). It was in this visit that the Quality Improvement Council helped them to come up with an effectively planned organizational chart hence ensuring that the organization embraced the entire idea. Besides, a six-month program was implemented to help in the implementation of the same.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the TQM Program as it was Implemented

The implementation of the TQM program at the WFRMC had both strengths and weaknesses some of which are as outline below

Strengths

The strength that the program had was the fact that it was being spearheaded by the top management, Paul Batalden, who was the Corporate Vice President for Medical (Curtis & Mclaughlin, 2017). Given his influence, experience, and dedication to the program, TQM had no option but just to be successful. Furthermore, the integration of the TQM was easy since the tool of self-assessment, which was part and parcel of the continuous improvement, had been successfully operating at the WFRMC.

Weaknesses

The TQM program had some weaknesses in the sense that the number of staff at the CQI was low, as there was only one employee, Ms. Bette. She was overwhelmed with the task since she had to work both as a coach and a staff (Hammarth, 2012). Besides, some of the staff members opposed the new idea stating that it is rigid and slow.

Role of the Corporate Headquarters

The corporate headquarters played a substantial role in ensuring that WFRMC successfully implemented TQM (Curtis & Mclaughlin, 2017). Since WFRMC had a few numbers of staff on CQI, the corporate headquarter issued Dr. Batalden as a mentor who, in turn, ensured that the program was successful. It was via Dr. Batalden that the structure of the organization was reshaped to exhibit support for quality improvement programs (Kibbe, Kaluzny, & McLaughlin, 2015). Without help from the corporate headquarters, the implementation of the TQM could have been very challenging for WFRMC.

Measuring the Impact of CQI On the Hospital

WFRMC took several measures to gauge the impact on the CQI. It measured the impact by tasking the departmental heads to work with self-assessment tools (SAT) (Lorch & Pollak, 2014). The tools had scoring guidelines as well as a scoring matrix for gauging the impact of the CQI on the hospital in relation to supporting strategic direction. The SAT ensured that the disparities that could arise in various departments were handled if they happen to fall within the scope of capabilities (Ward, 2020). The SAT was used by the CQI to understand road maps of departmental implementations and to utilize the information to coach and train the departments. SAT, therefore, was an effecting tool that was used to gauge the impact of CQI in the hospital.

The Effort That has Been Made to Use TQM to Support Tactical Programs within the Hospital

TQM has been very vital in supporting various tactical programs, especially universal chatting. It was discovered that most patients could experience delays in treatments and discharges, owing to the fact that some of their reports could not be attached to the corresponding records (Curtis & Mclaughlin, 2017). The team of continuous quality improvement ensured an enhancement in chatting practices and incorporated various deliverables such as report availability, utilization of resources, and availability of reports. This enhanced the chatting practices hence leveraging the quality of service delivery within the hospitals.

Dealing with Continuous Improvement

As long quality improvement is concerned, John Kausch should take several approaches in dealing with quality improvements. Among the many things he should consider doing is to ensure that the staff available in all departments mutually embrace and implement the CQI without being coaxed to adhere to regulations (Curtis & Mclaughlin, 2017). Moreover, John Kausch needs to perform a comprehensive campaign on quality awareness to ensure that the entire staff understands the need and hence the significance of continuous quality improvements.

References

Ahn, H., Carter, L., Reiman, S., & Hartzel, S. (2016). Development of a quality assurance and continuous quality improvement (CQI) model in public child welfare systems. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 11(2), 166-189. doi: 10.1080/15548732.2016.1255698

Buchbinder, S., & Shanks, N. (2018). Introduction to health care management (2nd ed., p. 676). New York.

Curtis, P. & Mclaughlin, M. (2017). West Florida Regional Medical Center. Retrieved 28 February 2020, from https://nnlm.gov/members/directory/13380

Hammarth, A. (2012). Continuous quality improvement and health educators. Health Promotion Practice, 13(4), 438-443. doi: 10.1177/1524839912446481

Kibbe, D., Kaluzny, A., & McLaughlin, C. (2015). Integrating guidelines with continuous quality improvement: Doing the right thing the right way to achieve the right goals. The Joint Commission Journal On Quality Improvement, 20(4), 181-191. doi: 10.1016/s1070-3241(16)30060-8

Lorch, J., & Pollak, V. (2014). Continuous quality improvement in daily clinical practice: A Proof of Concept Study. Plos ONE, 9(5), e97066. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097066

Ward, B. (2020). HCA Florida West names new CEO for regional medical center bayonet point. Retrieved 28 February 2020, from https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/news/2019/10/04/hca-florida-west-names-new-ceo-for-regional.html